(107) Unveiling Gender Gaps in Industry Payments to Pediatric Critical Care Physicians

Introduction: Despite significant advancements in gender equality, female physicians continue to face inequitably lower compensation for equivalent work compared to their male counterparts. This gender-based pay gap is not confined to a single sector but permeates both academic and community medical practices, affecting salary reimbursement, research funding, publication rates, and leadership promotions. (1-4) The disparity highlights the ongoing challenges women face in the healthcare field, despite doing the same job and having comparable skills and qualifications.

Methods: A retrospective multicenter descriptive study was performed. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Open Payments database (openpaymentsdata.cms.gov) was queried to identify pediatric intensivists who received payments from healthcare industry entities. The extracted data were subjected to descriptive statistical analysis to evaluate trends in physician demographics and payment patterns.

Results: From 2016 to 2022, male pediatric intensive care physicians received twice as many payments as their female counterparts, with approximately $300,000 more disbursed to men. While female physicians were more frequently recipients of honoraria and gifts, male physicians consistently secured larger individual payments in these same categories. Additionally, men were disproportionately favored in both number of payments and total funding in research grants, educational stipends, consulting fees, non-consulting compensation, travel and lodging, and food and beverage.

Conclusions: Although women represent nearly half of the pediatric critical care workforce—48.6% of 3,070 physicians—significant disparities in industry payments persist. Future research is crucial to uncover the underlying causes of these disparities, which impact career advancement, research opportunities, and gender equity. Addressing these issues could promote equitable industry practices, enhance female representation in influential roles, and foster a more diverse medical landscape, ultimately benefiting patients, providers, and the industry as a whole.