Agilon Health Female Physician Leadership Council Bringing Awareness to Gender Wage Gap
MUSKINGUM COUNTY, Ohio- A group of women in medicine are breaking the glass ceiling for female physicians nationwide.
According to Dr. Williams, family physician at South Zanesville Family Medical Center, even though women make up over 50 percent of medical classes, they are still highly under-represented in leadership.
The agilon health Female Physician Leadership Council, is making a difference by bringing awareness about these challenges women face in the healthcare system.
“In 2021 Doximity came out with a report on the physician gender wage gap so on average female physicians make $122,000 less than their male counterparts and if you extrapolate this over a career, it’s over $2 million dollars,” Dr. Williams said. “We believe we can help close the gender wage gap, which is currently 28 percent, by value based care and the reason behind that is female physicians, and this is per reputable journals, we spend more time with patients, we lean into more preventive guidelines, we have a lower readmission rate and lower mortality rates.”
The organization council was created by Dr. Williams along with three other women in medicine in 2021, which now hold a total of 14 members.
Dr. Williams said being a mother who has a daughter, it’s important to pave the way for all young girls looking to be in the medical field one day and even for the women who are struggling to find a voice now.
“What we have been doing and have been working on is increasing leadership internally, but also ideally we’re going to be promoting that externally for female physicians, we’re providing workshops to that,” Dr. Williams said. “We’re also trying to provide awareness around these topics and also advertising that the solution may be this value based care model through agilon health.”
Dr. Williams said the organization is fairly new, but if anyone is interested in more information on the agilon health Female Physician Leadership Council, they can visit at agilonhealth.com.
