DATA FEATURE – DATA PORTION – FINAL
Dani-Elle Dubé
Data set: Sunshine List 2012

Female Physicians in the Ontario Healthcare Workforce 2012

Being a doctor used to be a man’s profession. But over the years, more and more women physicians have entered the field of practice and broken barriers. Or have they?

Every year the Ontario Ministry of Finance is required to release a public sector salary disclosure, a categorical list that provides the income and tax benefit details of every public service worker in the province who makes over $100,000.
Informally known as the “Sunshine List”, the ministry must submit the report as part of the Public Sector Salary Disclosure Act of 1996.

Using the data, I will explore where women physicians stand in the healthcare field. More specifically, I will be comparing their incomes to their male counterparts through various means using graphs, charts and maps. As well, I will be exploring where most women tend to practice according to volume and which healthcare facilities tend to make the most income in terms of their female physician employees.

Although the Sunshine List provides some data, it does not paint an entire picture of where women physicians stand because of Ontario’s billing practices. Only but a few physicians are actual employees of hospitals, while others have different circumstances. Many physicians provide their own billing, such as the case of most specialists and family doctors, while others provide care through their own privately owned practices.

The used data below is based solely on what was provided in the list by the ministry and does not include those with private practices or under contract. The available number of total physicians in the disclosure was 147, 87 of which are men and 60 women.

Background

As side research, I consulted the 2013 National Physician’s Survey. This survey is given out too physicians all over Canada asking questions about their demographics, work, personal life and so on.

According to the 2013 National Physician’s Survey, there are approximately 8,800 female physicians in Ontario and 14,200 male physicians.

In many situations, the survey revealed that women tend to feel more overworked with a higher instance of unemployment compared to male physicians. They also worked less overall in a 52-week period and tend to feel more dissatisfied with their professional life.

NOTE: TO READ A PDF-VERSION OF THIS STORY WITH ALL THE CHARTS, PLEASE GO HERE TO DOWNLOAD.
DATA

As predicted, more men than women physicians appeared on the salary disclosure document. As well, collectively, men pulled in more money overall at $24,039,432.62 than women at $16,787,953.06. That is a different of $7,251,479.62.

Only two of the top five income earners were female. Combined, the women earned $834,243.63 while male physicians earned a combined total of $1,398,448.03. That is $564,204.40 more than what women earned. As well, the top salary earner overall, Thomas Stewart, made $576,626.40 in 2012 and the top female earner (who came in second), Kelly S. MacDonald, made $431,724.51. That is a difference of $144,901.89 between the top male earner and top female earner.

Out of the top 10 highest salaries, four of them were women. Collectively, women pulled in $1,604,671.01 in 2012. That same year, the men altogether made $2,559,975.59. That is a difference of $955,304.58.

The top five female earners, together, pulled in $1,982,995.30 while all top five male earners collectively made $2,178,716.80. That is a $195,721.50, or 0.10 per cent difference in earnings.

The lowest top earner of females makes $378,324.29 and the lowest male top earner $386.268.74.

What’s interesting, however, is that women physicians tend to earn more salary on average than men physicians, but not by much. On average, women earn $279,799.22 and men $276,315.32. That’s a difference of only $3,483.90.

Taking a closer look, we see that the women physicians of the University Health Network collectively make the most salary at $7,313,728.675 compared to other hospitals in the province. The least, however, was London Health Sciences Centre at $118,453.66. There were 23 women physicians that appeared on the list that were employed by the University Health Network. On average, women of the Network earned $317,988.20. However, there was only one woman from the London Health Sciences Centre that appeared on the list with a salary of $118,453.66. But looking the males that were employed by the London Health Sciences Centre that appeared on the list shows that only one man was employed with a salary of $156,848.30. Thirty-one men were employed by the University Health Network with an average collective income of $319,386.51.

You may also view the Google map that physically displays all of the hospital locations and collective incomes of female physicians in Ontario here:
https://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?docid=1pnsUs5a8ZtUGFziAymzVc8U73lkCr3wZkBGnlW8

https://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?docid=1pnsUs5a8ZtUGFziAymzVc8U73lkCr3wZkBGnlW8