Researchers used administrative databases to identify more than 40 million outpatient referrals to surgeons from Jan. 1, 1997, to Dec. 31, 2016, with follow-up to Dec. 31, 2018.
Male surgeons accounted for 77.5 percent of all surgeons but received 87.1 percent of referrals from male physicians and 79.3 percent of referrals from female physicians.
“Our work points toward a mechanism that directly contributes to the sex-based pay gap in medicine,” Fahima Dossa, MD, co-lead author of the study, told MedicalXpress. “Focused efforts at reducing the effects of implicit and explicit biases on referrals to physicians are now needed.”
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