The medical industry directs the vast majority of its spending for the promotion and advertising of medical devices and drugs towards physicians––but those industry payments are significantly larger for male physicians compared to female physicians.
The inequity of payments, which have been publicly accessible since 2010, contribute to the overall current state of gender inequity in medicine. Researchers from the Department of Surgery at University of California in Irvine looked at payments to determine male physicians received higher payment from medical industry companies compared to female physicians. They published their findings in JAMA Surgery.
The cross-sectional study included 1,050 payments made from the medical industry from 2013 to 2019. Of the studied payments, just 3.1% of the highest earners were women, and men received significantly higher median total payment than women did. The other 96.9% of the highest earners were men. Overall, women held a lower mean payment position compared with men.
In fact, women were less compensated by men with a difference of $118,057, the study found. The median total payment for men was $129,387, compared to $20,622 for women. The median payment differences were still significant even after accounting for specialty, the researchers found. Over the years of the study period, that discrepancy actually worsened significantly.
“The difference in median compensation between female and male physicians in 2013 was $54,343, whereas the difference in 2019 increased [three]-fold to $166,778,” wrote first author Brittany Sullivan, MD, of the University of California, Irvine, et al.
According to the researchers, this may be the only study to look at these industry payments across specialties and to report these trends. The study found the highest discrepancy in payments was where men typically dominated, such as surgery specialties.
“The fields with the largest payment gaps, however, were male-dominated surgical fields: orthopedic surgery, urology, and neurosurgery,” Sullivan et al. wrote. “Orthopedic surgery had the overall largest payment gap of $1,752,573, which is consistent with previous studies looking at the industry relationship with female and male orthopedic surgeons.”
The study also revealed that, of the 15 companies included in the study for making industry payment to physicians, 14 were led by a male CEO, and all 15 had boards that were primarily led by men. Having more diversity actually did have an impact on industry payments.
“At Terumo Corporation, the company with a female CEO and a board of directors that was almost half female, the compensation gap was in the third lowest of the 15 companies, with a median difference of $26,123,” Sullivan and colleagues wrote.
Amy joined TriMed Media as a Senior Writer for HealthExec after covering home care for three years. When not writing about all things healthcare, she fulfills her lifelong dream of becoming a pirate by sailing in regattas and enjoying rum. Fun fact: she sailed 333 miles across Lake Michigan in the Chicago Yacht Club "Race to Mackinac."