Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Comment
. 2022 Nov 1;157(11):1017-1022.
doi: 10.1001/jamasurg.2022.4301.

Assessment of Medical Industry Compensation to US Physicians by Gender

Brittany G Sullivan  1 , Fares Al-Khouja  1 , Margaret Herre  2 , Morgan Manasa  1 , Alexander Kreger  1 , Jessica Escobar  1 , Andreea Dinicu  1 , Ariana Naaseh  1 , Farideh Dehkordi-Vakil  1 , Michael Stamos  1 , Alessio Pigazzi  2 , Mehraneh D Jafari  2
Affiliations
Comment

Assessment of Medical Industry Compensation to US Physicians by Gender

Brittany G Sullivan et al. JAMA Surg. .

Abstract

Importance: It has been well established that female physicians earn less than their male counterparts in all specialties and ranks despite controlling for confounding variables.

Objective: To investigate payments made from highest-grossing medical industry companies to female and male physicians and to assess compensation and engagement disparities based on gender.

Design, setting, and participants: This retrospective, population-based cross-sectional study used data from the Open Payments database for the 5 female and 5 male physicians who received the most financial compensation from each of the 15 highest-grossing medical supply companies in the US from January 2013 to January 2019.

Main outcomes and measures: The primary outcome was total general payments received by female and male physicians from medical industry over time and across industries. The secondary outcome was trends in industry payment to female and male physicians from 2013 to 2019.

Results: Among the 1050 payments sampled, 1017 (96.9%) of the 5 highest earners were men and 33 (3.1%) were women. Female physicians were paid a mean (SD) of $41 320 ($88 695), and male physicians were paid a mean (SD) of $1 226 377 ($3 377 957) (P < .001). On multivariate analysis, male gender was significantly associated with higher payment after adjusting for rank, h-index, and specialty (mean [SD], $1 025 413 [$162 578]; P < .001). From 2013 to 2019, the payment gap between female and male physicians increased from $54 343 to $166 778 (P < .001).

Conclusions and relevance: This study found that male physicians received significantly higher payments from the highest-grossing medical industry companies compared with female physicians. This disparity persisted across all medical specialties and academic ranks. The health care industry gender payment gap continued to increase from 2013 to 2019, with a wider compensation gap in 2019.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of Interest Disclosures: Dr Pigazzi reported receiving personal fees from Ethicon and Intuitive Surgical, Inc outside the submitted work. Dr Jafari reported receiving fees for consulting for Storz to the institution outside the submitted work. No other disclosures were reported.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.. Median General Payments Stratified by Gender per Year From 2013 to 2019
Figure 2.
Figure 2.. Median General Payment Stratified by Academic Rank
Figure 3.
Figure 3.. Median General Payment Stratified by Medical Specialty and Gender
OBGYN indicates obstetrics gynecology.
Figure 4.
Figure 4.. Median General Payment Stratified by Surgical Specialty and Gender
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment in

Comment on

References

    1. Campbell EG, Rao SR, DesRoches CM, et al. . Physician professionalism and changes in physician-industry relationships from 2004 to 2009. Arch Intern Med. 2010;170(20):1820-1826. doi:10.1001/archinternmed.2010.383 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Kirschner NM, Sulmasy LS, Kesselheim AS. Health policy basics: the physician payment sunshine act and the open payments program. Ann Intern Med. 2014;161(7):519-521. doi:10.7326/M14-1303 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Deipolyi AR, Becker AS, Covey AM, et al. . Gender disparity in industry relationships with academic interventional radiology physicians. AJR Am J Roentgenol. 2020;215(2):494-501. doi:10.2214/AJR.19.22176 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Ray GS, Lechtig A, Rozental TD, Bernstein DN, Merchan N, Johnson AH. Gender disparities in financial relationships between industry and orthopaedic surgeons. J Bone Joint Surg Am. 2020;102(4):e12. doi:10.2106/JBJS.19.00669 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Velez D, Mehta A, Rotker K, Thavaseelan S. Gender disparities in industry payments to urologists. Urology. 2021;150:59-64. doi:10.1016/j.urology.2020.05.074 - DOI - PubMed