Analyzing data from more than 80,000 full-time physicians, Christopher Whaley and coauthors found that male physicians earn approximately $2 million, or 25 percent, more than female physicians over the course of a simulated forty-year career. These results account for potentially confounding factors including hours worked, practice type and location, and years of experience. 

In a separate paper, Whaley and coauthors explore physician compensation in the context of rapid growth in health system acquisition of physician practices. Vertical integration is associated with a 0.8 percent reduction in regression-adjusted income among physicians overall. Surgical specialists saw small increases in income, while nonsurgical specialists experienced small declines.

Direct care workers, including personal care aides, home health aides, and nursing assistants, comprise one-fifth of the US health care workforce. According to a paper by Esther Friedman and colleagues, almost all states experienced an increase in the size of their home care workforce between 2009 and 2020, and most saw a decrease in their nursing home workforce, relative to the number of people who needed these services.

Today on Health Affairs Blog, Grant Martsolf and coauthors respond to a recent Health Affairs Blog post, arguing that policy researchers and advocates should measure and prioritize the capabilities that Americans of all ages need to succeed and thrive.

Jamille Fields Allsbrook and Katie Keith argue that the Biden administration can use its existing authority under federal civil rights laws to promote anti-racist health care and insurance.

In a GrantWatch post, a foundation in the Pacific Northwest aims to bridge the oral health equity gap and eliminate disparities by taking steps to put equity front and center in its work.

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The centerpiece of the December Health Affairs Journal Club meeting is "Despite National Declines In Kidney Failure Incidence, Disparities Widened Between Low- And High-Poverty Counties." In the paper, which appears in the December 2021 issue of the journal, Kevin Nguyen and coauthors examine trends in the incidence of kidney failure by county-level poverty among US adults between 2000 and 2017. While national estimates suggest that overall rates are declining, the authors found marked disparity in incidence of kidney failure between low- and high-poverty counties.

Health Affairs Senior Editor Jessica Bylander will host Nguyen, an investigator in the Department of Health Services, Policy, and Practice at the Brown University School of Public Health, to talk in detail about the research, methods, and conclusions of the paper, including changes in policy and care delivery that will be required to close the gap for low-income areas and communities.

Date:     Thursday, December 9, 2021
Time:     1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. (ET)
Place:    Online details will be shared with registrants 24 hours in advance of the event.

About Health Affairs

Health Affairs is the leading peer-reviewed journal at the intersection of health, health care, and policy. Published monthly by Project HOPE, the journal is available in print and online. Late-breaking content is also found through healthaffairs.org, Health Affairs Today, and Health Affairs Sunday Update.

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