The Women Physician Leadership Council through agilon health empowers women in the primary care field.
By Jenna Hughes
The growth in the total physician workforce, from 730,654 in 2004 to 989,320 in 2022, reflects the increasing presence of women physicians across the industry, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC). The perspective of female physicians has become increasingly crucial to providing patients with high-quality, value-based healthcare services.
agilon health, a company transforming health care for seniors by empowering primary-care physicians (PCPs) through value-based care, has elevated women through its Women Physician Leadership Council. The Council is developing female leadership within agilon’s Physician Network and the next generation of women PCPs to deliver value-based care in their communities.
The Women Physician Leadership Council also supports female leaders within the healthcare industry in recognizing and addressing the challenges that women often face disproportionately to their male colleagues.
Repertoire Magazine spoke to several founding members of agilon’s Women Physician Leadership Council on the necessity for female leadership within healthcare, including:
- Dr. Victoria DiGennaro, Family Medicine Physician of the Pioneer Physicians Network and CEO of her own private physician practice.
- Dr. Liam Fry is a Board-Certified Geriatrician, and the owner/President of Austin Geriatrics Specialists in Austin, Texas. Austin Geriatrics recently merged with a multi-state group providing multi-specialty care with a specific focus on primary care.
- Dr. Kristin Oaks is a Value-Based-Care (VBC) Medical Director at Central Ohio Primary Care. Dr. Oaks provides clinical leadership for the practice’s VBC programs and serves on its executive leadership team.
Supporting female physicians
agilon’s Women Physician Leadership Council provides women physicians with leadership skills training, mentorship, support, and sponsorship. The Council also encourages female physician representation at the top levels of leadership within each of agilon’s physician partners’ respective medical practices.
“The Council was formed to help agilon health address how to promote, develop, and sponsor more women physician leaders with the goal of improving agilon’s overall Physician Network,” said Dr. Fry. “This includes representation at all levels of decision making to create a growing voice of women primary care providers within each partner organization.”
The Women Physician Leadership Council, in turn, provides a supportive space of mentorship for each of the members involved to help them achieve their respective goals personally and within their practices.
“The training the Council provides – both intensive as well as through mentoring, friendship, and general support and guidance – has helped me significantly advance my own career as well as to gain more influence in my practice,” said Dr. Fry.
“Our mission as an organization is to promote women physicians in leadership and their ongoing success in the field of medicine,” said Dr. DiGennaro. “One of our goals is to reverse female underrepresentation in healthcare leadership through supporting and empowering each other.”
agilon health has also developed a women physician resource group (PRG) to complement the Council and facilitate conversation and empowerment of women physicians and allies throughout its network.
“We aim to guide and support women across the field of medicine to focus on their own individual leadership development through coaching and expert lectures,” said Dr. Oaks.
“Organizations such as the Women Physicians Leadership Council represent an exciting time in healthcare,” said Dr. DiGennaro. “By promoting women physicians through value-based care, the future of healthcare is very bright.”
Workplace challenges
Data suggests that female physicians deliver better patient outcomes, including lower readmission and mortality rates, according to studies from The Lancet and JAMA.
Women, despite their contributions to the primary care workforce, face numerous challenges to leadership and equality within the healthcare sector. Burnout, a widening workforce gender gap, taking time off work to raise children, and discrimination challenges within the workplace are significant, specifically amongst female physicians, which poses ongoing obstacles to career mobility.
“In the absence of women in positions of leadership, the industry fails to consider how women work as professionals,” said Dr. Oaks. “Without female leadership within healthcare, the voice of many physicians within the workforce is unfortunately not heard.”
The Council supports a wide network of female physician leaders, which serves to uplift its fellow colleagues to pursue positions of leadership and encourage women’s perspectives to be heard within the field of medicine.
“Women overall tend to have lower morbidity and mortality for their patients, creating very high value in medicine,” said Dr. DiGennaro. “In order to better serve patients and improve our healthcare system, it is vital that we promote women in the profession.”
“I find that value-based care helps to address workplace challenges,” said Dr. DiGennaro. “agilon health participates in full risk contracting as value-based care, meaning that we are responsible for the total quality and cost of care of our patient population. This allows clinicians to provide the ‘right care to the right patients at the right time.’”
Value-based care has transformed the healthcare landscape, with physicians taking the time to focus on patients’ entire health journey to support their care experience.
“We are in a particularly difficult time with increased utilization and increased medical expenses specifically for our senior population,” said Dr. Oaks. “Women physicians typically have shifted to fewer fee-for-service visits and seek to transform their practices aligned with value-based care guidelines.”
“Value-based care allows us as physicians to seek to improve health outcomes in our empaneled patients and are appropriately compensated for achieving that goal,” said Dr. Oaks. “When we eliminate unnecessary expenses from the patient’s care, we improve their health and our economics.”
Empowering female physicians
Women account for more than one-third of active physicians today, and, according to AAMC, women are expanding their presence in healthcare to become a significant share of active physicians in such specialties as pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, dermatology, pathology, and psychiatry.
More female physicians than ever are going into the field of primary care. From 2004 to 2022, the number of women in the active physician primary care workforce increased from 28% to 43%, according to the AAMC.
“It is important that leadership within healthcare organizations is balanced,” said Dr. Fry. “We see increasing numbers of women physicians going into primary care (a larger percentage than men), and approximately half of all patients are women.”
Despite advancement for female physicians overall, within the field of primary care, there has been a trend toward women leaving the workforce five to 10 years after finishing their education. Many women within PCP healthcare leadership find themselves as one of the only women among many male leaders.
“Women leaving the healthcare field is a huge loss, both to the nation in terms of investment but also to our practices and patients,” said Dr. Fry.
A report from AAMC found that within six years of completing training, 22.6% of women physicians were not working full-time compared to 3.6% of male physicians.
“The Council is working to find ways to retain women physicians,” said Dr. Fry. “This includes working through the challenges of balancing family and work responsibilities and finding ways to effectively reintegrate women who have taken time off to raise a family and are wanting to come back to practice.”
Through the work of numerous prominent female medical leaders, the Women Physician Leadership Council develops female leadership within the agilon Physician Network and bolsters the next generation of women PCPs to stay with the career and deliver value-based care within their practices and communities.
The Women Physician Leadership Council’s top initiatives are education of more women in healthcare, promoting an increased number of female leaders, advocating for healthcare policy, reducing/eliminating the gender wage gap, and addressing burnout within healthcare. These initiatives work toward the Council’s goal of lifting up female physicians and encouraging them to pursue positions of leadership within the healthcare industry.
“One of the most visible ways a company can demonstrate support is to ensure that their leadership, all the way up to the C-suite, has a balanced makeup that includes a significant number of qualified women,” said Dr. Fry. “If we are going to be able to both recruit and retain high quality physicians, we will need to be sure our strategy is inclusive and promotes women physicians.”