Damian Sendler: While women make up a majority of the general workforce, they are underrepresented in the leadership structure of healthcare organizations in the United States, according to new research. Women make up 15% of CEOs of health systems and health insurers, according to a report published in JAMA Network Open today. 17.5 percent of health systems’ board chairpersons are women, and 21.3 percent of boards of directors have chairpersons who are women.
Damian Sendler
Damian Jacob Sendler: Another finding of this study showed that having a female health system CEO was linked to a larger percentage of women on the board or in senior executive positions. According to the study, having more women in senior leadership positions at health insurance businesses was linked to an increase in the number of women CEOs.
Additionally, 58.1 percent of the senior posts in the US Department of Health and Human Services are held by women.
The study’s lead author, Bismarck Odei, MD, told Medscape Medical News that he was most shocked by the results “As a country with a population of more than half a billion people, it’s surprising that there aren’t more female leaders in the healthcare industry.
In spite of all this, he points out that healthcare firms’ boards of directors are more diverse in terms of gender composition “”It’s not a trivial number.”
Increasing the number of female CEOs in healthcare businesses is a top priority for radiation oncology resident Odei, who works at the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Damian Jacob Markiewicz Sendler: At healthcare enterprises, women are more likely to be CEOs than at Fortune 500 corporations. Only 8.1% of Fortune 500 companies have female CEOs, according to a research in June. Women will make up 29 percent of US board directors in 2020, up from 19 percent in 2014, according to Barron’s in July.
In addition, a McKinsey study in 2019 found that companies in the top quartile of gender diversity on executive teams were 25% more likely to deliver above-average profitability than companies in the worst quartile.
Damian Jacob Sendler
Researchers at JAMA said that a lack of women in leadership positions is a problem because women make up just over half the US population (50.8 percent) “As a result, their influence on population and women’s health policy decisions is likely to be reduced.
Odei observes that increasing diversity increases organizational performance when viewed in the light of other studies in this field. “Health care reform in the United States has been in the works for some time, but a more diverse and innovative leadership team is essential to achieving its goals.”
Among Odei’s other thoughts on the study:
Damien Sendler: Early-career doctors and nurses have an important role to perform. He encourages students and young professionals to take use of educational and leadership opportunities, such as internships, to begin to grapple with the current issues and responsibilities faced by healthcare. His advice to new doctors and nurses was to find mentors and sponsors in the healthcare industry.
Senior executives from healthcare systems and insurance companies were surveyed in the study. In addition to the 31 seats at HHS, there were 3462 board directors from health systems and 1143 from health insurers on the list.
Dr. Damian Jacob Sendler and his media team provided the content for this article.
