Not Second Best: Inject Value in Women’s Health Care
Women’s biology significantly affects how women experience disease and associated pain. But biological differences are often overlooked when women present with symptoms for diagnosis and treatment. Long-standing myths, based on cultural biases or on outdated research with male subjects, persist. The tragic result is that women may be misdiagnosed or dismissed when they present symptoms to their physicians. The results can be fatal.
Gender disparities in how women physicians and researchers are treated professionally only complicate the picture. Women physicians and researchers struggle to achieve leadership positions and attract large grants because of systemic discrimination in the medical and scientific communities. As a result, they cannot influence directions in diagnosis and treatment or research priorities to improve the health of women.
The cost of ignoring sex differences in women’s health care is high for both patients and for providers, who are under pressure to improve care and lower costs. As Medicare, employers and health plans continue to push providers toward accepting risk under Value-Based Health Care, it behooves all players to take women’s health much more seriously.
In this comprehensive look at the gender disparities in women’s health care in the U.S., Roji CEO Theresa Hush identifies the startling shortfalls in how women’s health issues are diagnosed and treated, clinical and research biases that perpetuate the problem, and what consumers and providers must do to meet women’s health needs.
Here’s a sampling of what you’ll learn: