Advisors with female clients who need to file for workers’ comp stand the best chance of getting benefits if they use a female doctor for the evaluation, according to a new study.
Women who were injured on the job and evaluated by female doctors were 5% more likely to be certified as having an injury that qualified them for benefits than if the doctors were men, according to a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Mass., that examined more than 70,000 workers’ compensation claims.
Moreover, the study found that women receive 8.5% more in benefits if they use a female doctor.
The researchers used what they considered a perfect sample of workers’ comp claimants—those in the Texas workers’ compensation insurance system. There, more than a third of claims involve dispute over an injured worker’s level of impairment, which automatically triggers an independent medical evaluation. And in the Texas system, an injured worker is randomly assigned to an independent doctor from a pool of doctors with appropriate credentials.
“The random assignment of doctors to patients means that differences in assessments between male and female doctors stem from the doctors themselves rather than from differences in the types of patients assigned to doctors,” the researchers wrote. “We show that being evaluated by a female doctor rather than a male doctor increases the likelihood that female claimants are evaluated as disabled and increases subsequent cash disability benefits females receive.”
In contrast, the gender of the doctor had no bearing on the likelihood that male patients would be certified as disabled for the purposes of workers’ comp, the study found.
When the researchers looked at how male doctors evaluate male versus female patients, they found there was a sizable gap between the rate of male patients being certified and the rate of female patients being certified, the study said. Female doctors, however, certified both male and female patients at the same rate.
“These results are consistent with male doctors evaluating female patients against a stricter standard than male patients and female doctors applying similar standards to male and female patients,” the researchers wrote.
While this study looked at workers’ compensation claims, there are many programs that rely on “gatekeepers” like doctors to help assess who gets a benefit and who does not, the study concluded. In the case of female claimants, being matched to female gatekeepers could result in a much better outcome, the study said.
“Research into other government programs that use gatekeepers to approve benefits could also reveal whether the programs are fair to women, including federal disability benefits, SNAP food stamps, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families,” the researchers wrote. “If matching the gender of the applicants with their gatekeepers increases women’s access to social insurance benefits more broadly, then this practice may meaningfully affect the benefits women receive and can work to close the gender disparities.”