Gender inequalities are always surfacing when it comes to pay scales in the various industries, but a new study has recently revealed they are quite substantial within the medical field.
According to a recent NerdWallet Health study on employees paid through Medicare, although men and women doctors are paid equally by the insurance company, male doctors earn 88 percent more when it comes to Medicare reimbursements. The study estimated that men are paid approximately $118,782 annually while women are paid $63,346.
For the study, NerdWallet reviewed data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, including information on nearly $77 billion in Medicare reimbursements and data on more than 880,000 medical providers.
As the study dug a bit deeper for explanations on the income gap, researchers found that male physicians had roughly 60 percent more Medicare patients than female physicians and that male physicians averaged more procedures/services covered on Medicare than women -- 5.7 services per patient for male doctors versus 4.7 services for female doctors per patient.
"What was interesting was, we saw this discrepancy across specialties," said Andrew Fitch, the report's lead researcher. "It is something that we should be looking at, as to why this variation exists. It's worth trying to figure out if that plays a factor."
Additional figures released from the report included a breakdown of earnings per patient that showed male MDs earn 24 percent more from Medicare than female MDs -- $262 per patient for men versus $211 per patient for women.
NerdWallet claims its study was based on data recently released by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), and included information regarding $77 billion in Medicare reimbursements for some 880,000 medical providers in 2012. NerdWallet added that this was first time that the CMS has released such data in 35 years.
Medicare remains the single largest payer of health insurance coverage in the United States.
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