Abstract
Purpose :
Gender inequality in medicine has been well established in literature. Female physicians tend to have lower salary, less representation in academia and research funding. Previous studies have shown that women in ophthalmology are underrepresented in terms of private industry payments and dollar amounts paid. Gender-based disparities in private industry payments to optometrists have not yet been studied. The present study investigates such disparities.
Methods :
This study was deemed exempt by the Mayo Clinic IRB because it utilized only publicly available data from Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services (CMS) open payments database. U.S. optometrists listed in the database who had received at least one payment during 2019 were identified. Payments were compared in the following four categories: 1, compensation for non-consulting services (e.g., serving as faculty or speaker at a venue other than a continuing education program), 2, serving as faculty or a speaker for continuing education program, 3, consulting fees, and 4, honoraria were included. The total number of optometrists practicing in 2019 was obtained from a public website using a combination Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, and Bureau of Economic Analysis databases. Statistical analysis was completed using RStudio 2021.09.1+372. Independent sample t-test was used to compare means, Wilcox rank-sum test was used to compare medians.
Results :
A total of 50,700 practicing optometrists were identified in 2019; 22,100 (43.6%) were female. 630 (2.9%) female and 1033 (3.6%) male optometrists received payments. For all payment categories, mean payment for females was $3354.55 and for males was $7150.60 (p<0.001). Median payment for females was $450 and for males was $1238.18 (p<0.001).
Conclusions :
These results confirm the trend previously reported within ophthalmology is also evident within optometry. Female optometrists are underrepresented in private industry payments. Dollar amounts paid to female optometrists were significantly less in all categories compared amounts paid to male optometrists.
This abstract was presented at the 2022 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Denver, CO, May 1-4, 2022, and virtually.