Gender medicine receives more and more academic and public interest. Recent medical and pharmaceutical research shows that men and women differ in diagnosis type and frequency, as well as symptoms and treatment for certain diseases. Simultaneously, more female physicians than ever enter the profession, changing the composition of the medical workforce and potentially increasing the recognition of gender and sex differences in the treatment of patients. We exploit a unique quasi-random procedure for filling vacant outpatient physician positions in Upper Austria to causally analyze the effect of the gender of a general practitioner (GP) on individual health care utilization. In this setting, patients have no influence on the replacement process. In addition, we show that female succeeding physicians do not select themselves to certain positions,