Addressing Sexual Harassment in the #MeToo Era: An Institutional Approach.

Sexual harassment is a particularly pernicious form of harassment that can result in long-lasting psychological damage to victims. In health care, it has deleterious effects on teamwork and communication and may affect patient care. Although concerns regarding sexual harassment in the workplace, including within health care, are not new, increased attention has been focused on this topic since late 2017 as a result of the #MeToo movement. As in other sectors, health care centers have experienced instances of sexual harassment. Evidence indicates that harassment in health care centers is not uncommon and has not decreased with time. Beyond reporting and addressing, health care institutions must establish policies that clearly outline the unacceptability of harassing behaviors. Moreover, institutions must have a systematic method to thoroughly investigate allegations of sexual harassment and to impose fair and consistent corrective actions when allegations are substantiated. This article describes Mayo Clinic's approach to this complex problem, including targeted efforts toward developing a culture intolerant of sexually harassing behavior.

A Structured Compensation Plan Results in Equitable Physician Compensation: A Single-Center Analysis.

OBJECTIVE: To assess adherence to and individual or systematic deviations from predicted physician compensation by gender or race/ethnicity at a large academic medical center that uses a salary-only structured compensation model incorporating national benchmarks and clear standardized pay steps and increments. PARTICIPANTS AND METHODS: All permanent staff physicians employed at Mayo Clinic medical practices in Minnesota, Arizona, and Florida who served in clinical roles as of January 2017. Each physician's pay, demographics, specialty, full-time equivalent status, benchmark pay for the specialty, leadership role(s), and other factors that may influence compensation within the plan were collected and analyzed. For each individual, the natural log of pay was used to determine predicted pay and 95% CI based on the structured compensation plan, compared with their actual salary. RESULTS: Among 2845 physicians (861 women, 722 nonwhites), pay equity was affirmed in 96% (n=2730). Of the 80 physicians (2.8%) with higher and 35 (1.2%) with lower than predicted pay, there was no interaction with gender or race/ethnicity. More men (31.4%; 623 of 1984) than women (15.9%; 137 of 861) held or had held a compensable leadership position. More men (34.7%; 688 of 1984) than women (20.5%; 177 of 861) were represented in the most highly compensated specialties. CONCLUSION: A structured compensation model was successfully applied to all physicians at a multisite large academic medical system and resulted in pay equity. However, achieving overall gender pay equality will only be fully realized when women achieve parity in the ranks of the most highly compensated specialties and in leadership roles.

Knowledge management in the era of digital medicine: A programmatic approach to optimize patient care in an academic medical center.

INTRODUCTION: The pace of medical discovery is accelerating to the point where caregivers can no longer keep up with the latest diagnosis or treatment recommendations. At the same time, sophisticated and complex electronic medical records and clinical systems are generating increasing volumes of patient data, making it difficult to find the important information required for patient care. To address these challenges, Mayo Clinic established a knowledge management program to curate, store, and disseminate clinical knowledge. METHODS: The authors describe AskMayoExpert, a point-of-care knowledge delivery system, and discuss the process by which the clinical knowledge is captured, vetted by clinicians, annotated, and stored in a knowledge content management system. The content generated for AskMayoExpert is considered to be core clinical content and serves as the basis for knowledge diffusion to clinicians through order sets and clinical decision support rules, as well as to patients and consumers through patient education materials and internet content. The authors evaluate alternative approaches for better integration of knowledge into the clinical workflow through development of computer-interpretable care process models. RESULTS: Each of the modeling approaches evaluated has shown promise. However, because each of them addresses the problem from a different perspective, there have been challenges in coming to a common model. Given the current state of guideline modeling and the need for a near-term solution, Mayo Clinic will likely focus on breaking down care process models into components and on standardization of those components, deferring, for now, the orchestration. CONCLUSION: A point-of-care knowledge resource developed to support an individualized approach to patient care has grown into a formal knowledge management program. Translation of the textual knowledge into machine executable knowledge will allow integration of the knowledge with specific patient data and truly serve as a colleague and mentor for the physicians taking care of the patient.

Executive Leadership and Physician Well-being: Nine Organizational Strategies to Promote Engagement and Reduce Burnout.

These are challenging times for health care executives. The health care field is experiencing unprecedented changes that threaten the survival of many health care organizations. To successfully navigate these challenges, health care executives need committed and productive physicians working in collaboration with organization leaders. Unfortunately, national studies suggest that at least 50% of US physicians are experiencing professional burnout, indicating that most executives face this challenge with a disillusioned physician workforce. Burnout is a syndrome characterized by exhaustion, cynicism, and reduced effectiveness. Physician burnout has been shown to influence quality of care, patient safety, physician turnover, and patient satisfaction. Although burnout is a system issue, most institutions operate under the erroneous framework that burnout and professional satisfaction are solely the responsibility of the individual physician. Engagement is the positive antithesis of burnout and is characterized by vigor, dedication, and absorption in work. There is a strong business case for organizations to invest in efforts to reduce physician burnout and promote engagement. Herein, we summarize 9 organizational strategies to promote physician engagement and describe how we have operationalized some of these approaches at Mayo Clinic. Our experience demonstrates that deliberate, sustained, and comprehensive efforts by the organization to reduce burnout and promote engagement can make a difference. Many effective interventions are relatively inexpensive, and small investments can have a large impact. Leadership and sustained attention from the highest level of the organization are the keys to making progress.

Poor early relapse recovery affects onset of progressive disease course in multiple sclerosis.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the relationship between early relapse recovery and onset of progressive multiple sclerosis (MS). METHODS: We studied a population-based cohort (105 patients with relapsing-remitting MS, 86 with bout-onset progressive MS) and a clinic-based cohort (415 patients with bout-onset progressive MS), excluding patients with primary progressive MS. Bout-onset progressive MS includes patients with single-attack progressive and secondary progressive MS. "Good recovery" (as opposed to "poor recovery") was assigned if the peak deficit of the relapse improved completely or almost completely (patient-reported and examination-confirmed outcome measured ≥6 months post relapse). Impact of initial relapse recovery and first 5-year average relapse recovery on cumulative incidence of progressive MS was studied accounting for patients yet to develop progressive MS in the population-based cohort (Kaplan-Meier analyses). Impact of initial relapse recovery on time to progressive MS onset was also studied in the clinic-based cohort with already-established progressive MS (t test). RESULTS: In the population-based cohort, 153 patients (80.1%) had on average good recovery from first 5-year relapses, whereas 30 patients (15.7%) had on average poor recovery. Half of the good recoverers developed progressive MS by 30.2 years after MS onset, whereas half of the poor recoverers developed progressive MS by 8.3 years after MS onset (p = 0.001). In the clinic-based cohort, good recovery from the first relapse alone was also associated with a delay in progressive disease onset (p < 0.001). A brainstem, cerebellar, or spinal cord syndrome (p = 0.001) or a fulminant relapse (p < 0.0001) was associated with a poor recovery from the initial relapse. CONCLUSIONS: Patients with MS with poor recovery from early relapses will develop progressive disease course earlier than those with good recovery.

Onset of progressive phase is an age-dependent clinical milestone in multiple sclerosis.

BACKGROUND: It is unclear if all patients with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS) ultimately develop progressive MS. Onset of progressive disease course seems to be age- rather than disease duration-dependent. Some forms of progressive MS (e.g. primary progressive MS (PPMS)) are uncommon in population-based studies. Ascertainment of patients with PPMS from clinic-based populations can facilitate a powerful comparison of age at progression onset between secondary progressive MS (SPMS) and PPMS but may introduce unclear biases. OBJECTIVE: Our aim is to confirm that onset of progressive disease course is more relevant to the patient's age than the presence or duration of a pre-progression relapsing disease course in MS. METHODS: We studied a population-based MS cohort (n=210, RRMS n=109, progressive MS n=101) and a clinic-based progressive MS cohort (n=754). Progressive course was classified as primary (PPMS; n=322), single attack (SAPMS; n=112) and secondary progressive (SPMS; n=421). We studied demographics (chi(2) or t-test), age-of-progression-onset (t-test) and time to Expanded Disability Status Scale of 6 (EDSS6) (Kaplan-Meier analyses). RESULTS: Sex ratio (p=0.58), age at progression onset (p=0.37) and time to EDSS6 (p=0.16) did not differ between the cohorts. Progression had developed before age 75 in 99% of patients with known progressive disease course; 38% with RRMS did not develop progression by age 75. Age at progression onset did not differ between SPMS (44.9±9.6), SAPMS (45.5±9.6) and PPMS (45.7±10.8). In either cohort, only 2% of patients had reached EDSS6 before onset of progression. CONCLUSIONS: Patients with RRMS do not inevitably develop a progressive disease course. Onset of progression is more dependent on age than the presence or duration of a pre-progression symptomatic disease course. Moderate disability is sustained predominantly after the onset of a progressive disease course in MS.

The Mayo Clinic Value Creation System.

The authors present Mayo Clinic's Value Creation System, a coherent systems engineering approach to delivering a single high-value practice. There are 4 tightly linked, interdependent phases of the system: alignment, discovery, managed diffusion, and measurement. The methodology is described and examples of the results to date are presented. The Value Creation System has been demonstrated to improve the quality of patient care while reducing costs and increasing productivity.

Quality of life is favorable for most patients with multiple sclerosis: a population-based cohort study.

BACKGROUND: Quality of life (QOL) is becoming an increasingly important factor in measurement of disease impact as well as an outcome measure in clinical trials. OBJECTIVES: To study the QOL of patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) in a population-based prevalence cohort and compare it with the general US population. DESIGN: Population-based prevalence cohort. SETTING: Olmsted County, Minn, population. PARTICIPANTS: All patients with definite MS (N = 201) alive and residing in Olmsted County on December 1, 2000. INTERVENTION: None. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: The expanded disability status scale (EDSS) and the Multiple Sclerosis Quality of Life Health Survey (MSQOL-54), which consisted of Short Form 36 (SF-36) with an additional 18 items pertinent to MS. RESULTS: The MSQOL-54 form was completed by 185 patients. Patients with MS had worse scores than the general US population with respect to physical functioning, vitality, and general health dimensions of the SF-36 QOL measure. Many QOL domains (pain, role emotional, mental health, and social functioning) were, however, similar for the 2000 MS cohort compared with the general US population. Duration of MS and EDSS score correlated significantly with physical functioning (P<.001). The QOL correlation with EDSS score was less than expected. No significant difference in the scores for the 8 QOL dimensions were found for patients with quick vs slow progression (quick progression defined as <5 years from onset to EDSS score of 3). The majority of patients with MS (77%) were mostly satisfied or delighted with their QOL. CONCLUSION: Though MS can cause significant disability, most patients with MS in the Olmsted County prevalence cohort continue to report a good QOL.

Management of multiple sclerosis: current trials and future options.

PURPOSE OF THE REVIEW: The present review of multiple sclerosis (MS) therapeutic trials published in 2002 is intended to assist the reader in understanding the most current advances in the care of their patients. RECENT FINDINGS: A substantial number of pivotal and preliminary reports continue to demonstrate encouraging new evidence that advances are being made in the care of patients with MS. Several short-term studies in relapsing/remitting MS have demonstrated that it is possible to complete head-to-head comparison trials of active agents in MS (e.g. without a placebo control group). The findings of these trials remain open to interpretation and have generated considerable controversy, as expected. A phase 3 trial [the International MS Secondary Progressive Avonex Controlled Trial (IMPACT)] became the fourth study of the beta interferons (interferon-beta-1a, in this case) to demonstrate a partial effect on disease activity in secondary progressive MS. Two trials demonstrated apparent partial efficacy for the anthrecenedione mitoxantrone in active and progressive MS. Disappointing results were announced for a number of large pivotal trials, although those results have not yet been published (e.g. oral glatiramer acetate in relapsing/remitting MS, glatiramer acetate in primary progressive MS, and intravenous immunoglobulin in secondary progressive MS). SUMMARY: The MS research community needs to determine how best to address two key unanswered questions. Is late clinical deterioration often or invariably tied to the initial inflammatory/demyelinating phase of the disease? What is the optimal research design to address whether current and future experimental strategies affect the later phases of MS (e.g. does early treatment delay or prevent clinical disability)?