Women's Health Issues
Volume 17, Issue 3 , Pages 116-119 , May 2007

Gender Disparities in Managed Care: It’s Time for Action

  • Allen M. Fremont, MD, PhD

      Affiliations

    • RAND, Santa Monica, California
    • University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California
    • West Los Angeles VAMC, Los Angeles, California
    • Allen Fremont MD, PhD, is a physician and sociologist whose research focuses on reducing racial/ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in quality of care and health outcomes in managed care settings and communities. He co-leads RAND’s involvement in the National Health Plan Collaborative to Reduce Disparities and Improve Quality. As part of his role, he has led development of indirect estimates of race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and language of health plan members where self-reported data is unavailable. He is also leading efforts to develop interactive GIS mapping decision tools to efficiently identify areas with disparities and develop effective interventions to address them. He is the Director and PI for a RAND-led partnership of 30 health care organizations participating in AHRQ’s Acceleration Change and Transformation in Organizations and Networks (ACTION) program and is an NIH Disparities Scholar.
    • Corresponding Author InformationCorrespondence to: Allen M. Fremont, MD, PhD, Natural Scientist and Sociologist, RAND, Assistant Professor of Medicine, UCLA and West LA VAMC, 1776 Main Street, Santa Monica, CA 90407. Phone: 310-393-0411, ext. 7569.
    • ,
  • Rosaly Correa-de-Araujo, MD, MSc, PhD

      Affiliations

    • Office of the Secretary/Office of Global Health Affairs, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Rockville, Maryland
    • Rosaly Correa-de-Araujo, MD, MSc, PhD, is the Director of the Office of the Americas, Office of the Secretary/Office of Global Health Affairs at the US. Department of Health and Human Services. In this capacity she oversees the development of joint efforts on global health issues between the United States and other countries in the Americas region. As the former Director of Women’s Health and Gender-Based Research for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Dr. Correa-de-Araujo redirected the Agency’s women’s health program to encompass gender-based research and oversaw the development of a national research agenda for women in consultation with prominent members of the research community and other government agencies. She is the recipient of AHRQ Director’s Award of Excellence for pioneering the introduction of a gender-based approach into health services research.
    • ,
  • Sharonne N. Hayes, MD

      Affiliations

    • Mayo Clinic Women’s Heart Clinic and Cardiovascular Disease and Internal Medicine, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, Rochester, Minnesota
    • Sharone Hayes, MD, is a practicing cardiologist at Mayo Clinic, Rochester MN specializing in heart disease in women, preventive cardiology and echocardiography. Her clinical and research interests include exploring sex-based differences in heart disease and identifying and addressing disparities in cardiovascular disease management. She co-chaired the Jacob’s Institute of Women’s Health conference, “Women and Heart Disease: Putting Prevention into Primary Care” and is chair of the Advisory Board of WomenHeart: the National Coalition for Women with Heart.

Received 12 April 2007 ,Accepted 12 April 2007.

References 

  1. Bird CE, Fremont AM, Wickstrom SL, Bierman AS, McGlynn E. Improving women’s quality of care for cardiovascular disease and diabetes (The feasibility and desirability of stratified reporting of objective performance measures). Women’s Health Issues. 2003;13(4):150–157
  2. Bird CE, Fremont AM, Bierman AS, Wickstrom SL, Shah MM, Rector T, et al. Does quality of care for cardiovascular disease and diabetes differ by gender for enrollees in managed care?. Women’s Health Issues. 2007;17(3):131–138
  3. Chou AF, Scholle SH, Weisman CS, Bierman A, Correa-de-Araujo R, Mosca L. Gender disparities in the quality of cardiovascular disease care in private managed care. Women’s Health Issues. 2007;17(3):120–130
  4. Chou AF, Wong L, Weisman CS, Chan S, Bierman A, Correa-de-Araujo R. Gender differences in cardiovascular disease care in commercial and Medicare managed care plans. Women’s Health Issues. 2007;17(3):139–149
  5. Chou AF, Brown AF, Shih S, Jensen R, Pawlson G, Scholle SH. Gender and racial disparities in the management of diabetes mellitus among Medicare patients. Women’s Health Issues. 2007;17(3):150–161
  6. Corbelli JA, Corbelli JC, Bullano MF, Willey VJ, Cziraky MJ, Banks LD, et al. Gender bias in lipid assessment and treatment following percutaneous coronary intervention. Journal of Gender-Specific Medicine. 2003;6(3):21–26
  7. Correa-de-Araujo R. Serious gaps: How the lack of sex/gender-based research impairs health. Journal of Women’s Health. 2006;15:1116–1122
  8. Correa-de-Araujo R, Clancy CM. Catalyzing quality of care improvements for women. Women’s Health Issues. 2006;16:41–43
  9. Correa-de-Araujo R, Stevens B, Moy E, Nilasena D, Chesley F, McDermott K. Gender differences across racial and ethnic groups in the quality of care for acute myocardial infarction and heart failure associated with comorbidities. Women’s Health Issues. 2006;16(2):44–55
  10. Elliot, M., Fremont, A., Lurie N., Morrison, P., Pantoja, P., & Abrahamse, A. (2006). A New Method for Estimating Racial/Ethnic Disparities where Administrative Records Lack Self reported Race/Ethnicity. Population Association of America Annual Meeting. Los Angeles.
  11. Fiscella K, Fremont AM. Use of geocoding and surname analysis to estimate race and ethnicity. Health Services Research. 2006;41:1482–1500
  12. Fremont AM, Bierman SA, Wickstrom SL, Bird CE, Shah MM, Escarce JJ, et al. Use of indirect measures of race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status in managed care settings to identify disparities in cardiovascular and diabetes care quality. Health Affairs. 2005;24:516–526
  13. Kim C, Kerr EA, Bernstein SJ, Krein SL. Gender disparities in lipid management: The presence of disparities depends on the quality measure. American Journal of Managed Care. 2006;12(3):133–136
  14. Lurie, N., Fremont, A., Martin, C., Somers, S. A., Coltin, K., Gavras, J., et al. (In press). The National Health Plan Collaborative to reduce disparities and improve quality. The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Safety.
  15. Mosca L, Merz NB, Blumenthal RS, Cziraky MJ, Fabunmi RP, Sarawate C, et al. Opportunity for intervention to achieve American Heart Association Guidelines for optimal lipid levels in high-risk women in managed care setting. Circulation. 2005;111:488–493
  16. Trivedi AN, Zaslavsky AM, Schneider EC, Ayanian JZ. Relationship between quality of care and racial disparities in Medicare health plans. Journal of the American Medical Association. 2006;296:1998–2004

PII: S1049-3867(07)00058-8

doi: 10.1016/j.whi.2007.04.001

Women's Health Issues
Volume 17, Issue 3 , Pages 116-119 , May 2007

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