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Women primary care providers (PCPs) treating Medicare patients in a value-based care setting have equal or better patient outcomes than men PCPs in the same setting, despite having the same overall patient satisfaction rating, according to a recent study sponsored by agilon health, published May 16 in JAMA Health Forum. Women PCPs ranked higher than their men counterparts in terms of revenue, emergency room utilization, and diabetic and patient outcomes, but both men and women PCPs had patient satisfaction ratings of 7%, according to the study.
These results support prior evidence that despite women physicians performing better on process and outcome measures, their patients’ ratings do not correlate, the researchers write, including Ishani Ganguli, M.D., M.P.H., Division of General Internal Medicine and Primary Care, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School.
Under the value-based care model, women PCPs earned approximately $2,236 per patient per year, whereas men PCPs earned approximately $1,932 per patient per year. Under the fee-for-service model, women PCPs earned $454 per patient per year, while men PCPs earned an average of $476 per patient per year.
“The reversal of the gender gap under value-based payment is likely due to fewer emergency department visits and hospitalizations among women PCPs’ patients and may in turn reflect better alignment of value-based models to practice patterns more common in women (e.g., more face-to-face time per visit),” Ganguli said in the news release. “Equal pay could carry benefits beyond fair compensation, including reduced burnout and improved retention of the increasingly female primary care workforce to care for the aging U.S. population.”