Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Even In Nursing, Men Make More Than Women
Even in an occupation that women overwhelmingly dominate, they still earn less than men, a study of nurses found. The gender gap for registered nurses’ salaries amounts to a little over $5,000 yearly on average and it hasn’t budged in more than 20 years. That pay gap may not sound big — it’s smaller than in many other professions — but over a long career, it adds up to more than $150,000, said study author Ulrike Muench, a professor and researcher at the University of California, San Francisco. (Tanner, 3/24)
Even though nine out of 10 nurses are women, men in the profession earn higher salaries, and the pay gap has remained constant over the past quarter century, a study finds. The typical salary gap has consistently been about $5,000 even after adjusting for factors such as experience, education, work hours, clinical specialty, and marital and parental status, according to a report in JAMA, the journal of the American Medical Association. (Rapaport, 3/24)
Women outnumber men in the nursing profession by more than 10 to 1. But men still earn more, a new study finds. The report in this week’s Journal of the American Medical Association found that even after controlling for age, race, marital status and children in the home, males in nursing out-earned females by nearly $7,700 per year in outpatient settings and nearly $3,900 in hospitals.(Rovner, 3/24)
Another study finds the health law's expansion of coverage has not overwhelmed doctors, as some predicted -
Predictions that doctors would be overwhelmed by new patients as a result of the Affordable Care Act have not come true a year after the law's coverage expansions took effect. That's according to a study to be released Wednesday from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and health care technology company Athenahealth. By gathering data from 15,700 of Athenahealth's clients, mainly physicians, the study measured how the Affordable Care Act has affected doctors. (Hinchliffe, 3/24)