ROCHESTER, Minn. — A recent Mayo Clinic study suggests that active workstations incorporating a walking pad, bike, stepper and/or standing desk are successful strategies for reducing sedentary time and improving mental cognition at work without reducing job performance. Extended sedentary behavior, whether at work or home, increases a person's risk of preventable chronic diseases.

"Our findings suggest that it is feasible to blend movement with office work that previously would have been done during long periods of sitting. Active workstations may offer a way to potentially improve cognitive performance and overall health, simply by moving at work," says Francisco Lopez-Jimenez, M.D., a preventive cardiologist at Mayo Clinic and senior author of the study.

The research involved 44 participants in a randomized clinical trial where four office settings were evaluated over four consecutive days at Mayo Clinic's Dan Abraham Healthy Living Center. Study findings are published in the Journal of the American Heart Association. The settings included a stationary or sitting station on the first day, followed by three active workstations (standing, walking or using a stepper) in a randomized order. Researchers analyzed participants' neurocognitive function based on 11 assessments that evaluated reasoning, short-term memory and concentration. Fine motor skills were assessed through an online typing speed test and other tests.  

When participants used the active workstations, their brain function either improved or stayed the same, and their typing speed slowed down only a bit. However, the accuracy of their typing was not affected. The study revealed improved reasoning scores when standing, stepping and walking as compared with sitting. 

"Being sedentary is the new smoking when it comes to your cardiovascular health, and office workers may spend a large part of their eight-hour workday sitting at a computer screen and keyboard. These findings indicate that there are more ways to do that work while remaining productive and mentally sharp. We would do well to consider an active workstation in the prescription for prevention and treatment of conditions like obesity, cardiovascular disease and diabetes," says Dr. Lopez-Jimenez.

Journalists: Broadcast-quality video b-roll of active workstations can be found in the downloads at the end of the post. Please courtesy: "Mayo Clinic News Network."

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About Mayo Clinic
Mayo Clinic is a nonprofit organization committed to innovation in clinical practice, education and research, and providing compassion, expertise and answers to everyone who needs healing. Visit the Mayo Clinic News Network for additional Mayo Clinic news.

Media contact:

• Terri Malloy, Mayo Clinic Communications, newsbureau@mayo.edu

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When Mike Gyarmaty dislocated his right shoulder, he hoped corrective surgery at Mayo Clinic would return him to his normal way of life. But that surgery, along with the intense rehabilitation that followed, helped Mike go far beyond those hopes.

As Mike Gyarmaty raced toward home plate during a corporate softball tournament in Austin, Minnesota, back in 2013, he had a split-second decision to make: slide into the base feetfirst or headfirst. "I slid headfirst," he says. "I was 45 years old at the time. It was not one of my proudest moments."

While his slide beat the catcher's tag and propelled Mike's team to victory, it came at a painful cost. "I blew out my shoulder," Mike says. "I'd never dislocated a shoulder before. But I knew right away I'd suffered a severe dislocation of my right shoulder when I hit the ground."

As he lay in pain near home plate, Mike's first instinct was to try to pop his injured shoulder back into place. "I couldn't do it," he says. Mike was taken to the local Emergency Department in Austin, where physicians reset the shoulder and informed Mike of the full extent of his injury. "In addition to separating my shoulder, X-rays showed I'd also suffered a labral tear and broken bone," he says. "So I knew that wasn't going to be the end of my care."

Expert surgery

Mike was referred to Diane Dahm, M.D., an orthopedic surgeon at Mayo Clinic in Rochester. During an initial examination, Dr. Dahm quickly determined that Mike needed surgery.

"The first time I saw Mike, he could only lift his arm 90 degrees," Dr. Dahm says. "He was complaining of pain that was 10 out of 10 on our pain scale with use, but only 1 out of 10 with rest. So if he didn't move it, he was OK. But if he tried to move or use the arm at all, the pain was severe. His MRI also showed a displaced fracture of his right glenoid (shoulder socket), which looked fairly large."

"I wanted to be able to get back to playing with my kids the way I had before the injury."

Mike Gyarmaty

After performing a CT scan to better determine the true size of Mike's fracture, Dr. Dahm and her surgical team went about fixing it with a procedure known as arthroscopic bony Bankart repair. The team had to repair the fracture along with damage to the labrum — the tissue that surrounds the shoulder socket.

"Mike had an extensive tear of the labrum, as well as a displaced fracture which involved a significant amount of the glenoid surface," Dr. Dahm says. "What we do in that case is first visualize the damaged area through the arthroscope, placing traction stitches through small arthroscopic portals to pull the fracture back into place. We then put anchors in the bone that have stitches attached to them. Multiple stitches are placed through the labrum and around the bone fragment. The stitches are tied, securing things in place. We then make sure everything is stable before completing the procedure."

Demanding rehabilitation

Leading up to his surgical date, Mike says his hope was that surgery would not only help him get back to being the kind of athlete he wanted to be at that point in his life, but also to return to being the kind of active father he wanted to be.

"My goals for surgery were, worst-case, to get back to playing golf and doing normal exercise as it relates to something a person of my age would do," he says. "My best-case scenario was to be able to return to everything I'd been doing before the injury: lifting weights, playing basketball, pitching baseballs and softballs, throwing footballs, serving tennis balls. More than that, though, I wanted to be able to get back to playing with my kids the way I had before the injury."

While Dr. Dahm and the rest of Mike's care team wanted all of that for him, too, they knew getting there wouldn't be easy.

"Everyone was so professional, so compassionate and so caring," Mike says of his care team at Mayo Clinic. "At the same time, they didn't sugarcoat or overpromise anything. They said, 'Your shoulder injury is very bad, but we're going to do everything we can to get you back to a normal way of life.' In order to do that, they were very up front about how brutal my rehab was going to be after Dr. Dahm's surgery."

Before Mike's rehabilitation could began, however, Joe Eischen, a physical therapist in the Department of Sports Medicine at Mayo Clinic's Dan Abraham Healthy Living Center in Rochester, wanted to know more.

"One of the things we do really well at Mayo Clinic is to ask our patients what their goals for rehab are and what they're trying to get back to," Eischen says. "We then design a rehab program specifically for them based on their answers. We do have a standard rehab protocol that we follow with all of our patients. But every patient is a little different, so we modify that for each particular patient based on their desires and needs."

"There was a lot of pain throughout my rehab, but I prided myself on being a very diligent and hard rehabber, and doing whatever Joe asked me to do."

Mike Gyarmaty

Because Mike wanted to return to a lifestyle of recreational sports and roughhousing with his children, the rehabilitation program Eischen designed for him was more aggressive than most.

"Athletes are treated a little differently than somebody who doesn't play sports and who just wants to get back to living their life," Eischen says. "Some of the rehab is the same, of course, but it changes if a patient wants to get back to playing sports or a job that requires a lot of physical movement."

Regardless of a patient's long-term goals, Eischen says, they're not allowed to start down that path until they recover from surgery. "In the beginning, Mike was protected quite a bit by a brace and couldn't really do a lot," Eischen says. "Basically, we were letting what Dr. Dahm did — the surgical procedure she performed — heal."

Once the healing was complete, it was time for Mike to go to work. "We transitioned him into getting his range of motion back by starting some basic strength-training exercises," Eischen says. "At three months post-op, we wanted him to have full arm elevation. We also wanted him to have external rotation — meaning his arm at 90 degrees vertically from the floor, perpendicular to the floor, and his hand moving backward."

That may sound easy. But for someone coming off a severe and painful shoulder injury, it was anything but. "Just moving my arm back and forth — the most basic kind of arm movements — would hurt, but I had to do them," Mike says. "There was a lot of pain throughout my rehab, but I prided myself on being a very diligent and hard rehabber, and doing whatever Joe asked me to do."

Eischen says the amount of diligence and determination that Mike put into his rehabilitation is directly proportionate to the results he experienced and how quickly he experienced them. "Most patients are back to doing a lot of what they want to be doing six months after this procedure, but everybody's a little different," Eischen says.

Better than ever

Four months after his surgery, Mike started to see results. "My surgery was in September, and I can remember playing nine holes of golf in January in Florida," he says. "That was a huge milestone for me. I was thrilled. But it was just a testament to the surgical acumen of Dr. Dahm, as well as to how hard I rehabbed."

Today, six years later, Mike says his injured right shoulder is not only fully healed and rehabilitated, it actually feels better than his uninjured left shoulder.

"Not only have I gotten back to doing everything that I was doing before the injury, I'm now better off than I was before because while Dr. Dahm was fixing my shoulder, she also went out of her way to clean up the pre-existing damage I'd already done to it from being a baseball pitcher and serving tennis balls throughout much of my life," Mike says. "The surgery has far exceeded my best hopes and expectations. Forget about getting back to normal, I've come out better than ever."

"I'm fortunate to have a very good surgical team here at Mayo Clinic, and it's that whole team who makes stories like this happen."

Diane Dahm, M.D.

For Eischen, that represents the best possible outcome. "I got into this business because I like helping people — helping them achieve their goals in life and get back to whatever lifestyle it is they want to get back to," Eischen says. "So to hear that Mike's doing so well now is awesome. That's why we do this. But it's also a testament to how hard he worked. Mike should be proud of himself for following through on his rehab, for doing all that we asked him to do, and for not going rogue on us along the way."

For Dr. Dahm, Mike's success is also her team's success. "I'm fortunate to have a very good surgical team here at Mayo Clinic, and it's that whole team who makes stories like this happen," she says. "It starts in the operating room with great anesthesia, great surgical nurses and techs, great recovery room staff, great assistants, great residents, and great physical therapists. It's the whole team the whole way through. Every step of the way, you have people who are doing what's best for the patient, and when you have that, that's when you get patient outcomes like this."

HELPFUL LINKS

• Learn more about shoulder dislocation.
• Check out Orthopedic Surgery and Sports Medicine.
• Explore Mayo Clinic.
• Request an appointment.   

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This article first appeared in September 2007, in the publication Mayovox.

Mayo Clinic staff in Rochester got an introduction to the new Dan Abraham Healthy Living Center at an open house on Aug. 17. An estimated 10,000 attended the event, with facility tours, refreshments and a chance to win prizes. The center opened Sept. 4.

The new center features more cardiovascular equipment, an on-site café with healthy snacks, lap and water aerobics pools, top-of-the-line stationary bicycles and a dedicated cycling studio, an indoor track, women-only and beginner workout areas, on-site child care while working out, wellness evaluations, and much more.

Membership is available to all Mayo employees, students in Mayo education programs, volunteers, retirees, spouses and domestic partners.

The post #FlashbackFriday 2007: Dan Abraham Healthy Living Center Opening appeared first on Mayo Clinic News Network.

Research published this month in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine shows that members of Mayo Clinic’s employee wellness center, the Dan Abraham Healthy Living Center (DAHLC), who regularly participated in wellness activities, experienced significant weight loss and health care costs savings.

“A well-planned comprehensive wellness center can engage and retain members which can ultimately lead to important savings in health care costs and reductions in body mass index (BMI),” says lead researcher Bijan Borah, Ph.D., of the Mayo Clinic Robert D. and Patricia E. Kern Center for the Science of Health Care Delivery.

For the study, the researchers used data from 3,199 members who were continuously enrolled in the DAHLC for three years and their attendance was categorized: 1–60, 61–180, 181–360 and greater than 360 visits. Weight loss was defined as moving to a lower BMI category and was based on their BMI at the beginning of the study: normal (BMI <25), overweight (BMI ≤25 to <30), obese (BMI ≤30 to <35), and obesity grade II or higher (BMI ≥35). The baseline patient information was collected in the first year and study outcomes were assessed during the three-year follow-up period. Researchers pulled data from multiple institutional sources: the wellness center attendance database, electronic health records and a health care claims database.

Important results from the study include:

• Compared to members who visited the DAHLC 1–60 times in the three-year period, members with 181–360 visits were 46 percent more likely to have weight loss, while the individuals with the most visits (more than 360) were 72 percent more likely to have weight loss.
• Compared with the mean annual cost of $13,267 for 1–60visits, the mean for subjects with 61–180visits, 181–360 visits, and more than 360 visits had significantly lower costs at $9,538, $9,332 and $8,293, respectively.

“The significant association between health care costs and the frequency of wellness center visits, implying an average cost difference of $4,974 between the top and bottom quartiles of the DAHLC users, is too strong to ignore,” says Dr. Borah. “While the use of DAHLC is unlikely the only mediator of either weight control or health care costs, workplaces that are able to offer comprehensive wellness facilities may be capable of achieving similar gains irrespective of individuals’ activity pursuits at the facility.”

Other study authors include Jason Egginton, M.P.H.; Nilay Shah, Ph.D.; Amy Wagie, M.H.A.; Kerry Olsen, M.D.; Xiaoxi Yao, Ph.D.; and Francisco Lopez-Jimenez, M.D., all of Mayo Clinic.

About Mayo Clinic
Mayo Clinic is a nonprofit organization committed to medical research and education, and providing expert, whole-person care to everyone who needs healing. For more information, visit http://www.mayoclinic.org/about-mayo-clinic or https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/.

MEDIA CONTACT: Kelley Luckstein, Mayo Clinic Public Affairs, 507-284-5005, email: newsbureau@mayo.edu

The post Work Site Wellness Centers Equate to Weight Loss and Health Care Savings appeared first on Mayo Clinic News Network.

ROCHESTER, Minn. — Feb. 26, 2014 — As Mayo Clinic recognizes its Sesquicentennial year, the not-for-profit organization reached a record 63 million people in 2013. The strong performance was bolstered by successful implementation of new care delivery models — such as the Mayo Clinic Care Network — that provide knowledge to patients, physicians and consumers in traditional and new ways.

“Expanding our reach is not a new goal for us,” says John Noseworthy, M.D., Mayo Clinic president and CEO. “In fact, as we consider our history, growth has been a constant for 150 years.”

In 1983, Mayo treated 200,000 unique patients a year. In 2011, Mayo reached just over 20 million people a year and only two years later, in 2013, Mayo Clinic reached 63 million people. The numbers reflect:

• 1.2 million unique patients who come to Mayo Clinic from every state and 135 countries
• 4.1 million unique diagnostic tests through Mayo Medical Laboratories (MML) in more than 130 countries
• 7 million patients through Mayo Clinic Care Network
• 7.4 million people through Mayo’s social media channels
• 43.5 million people through products and services from Mayo’s Global Business Solutions (including online sources)

“The strong commitment of our entire organization has allowed us to respond successfully to unprecedented change in health care,” Dr. Noseworthy says. “We have changed the very definition of Mayo Clinic and stayed true to our core mission and values.”

The Mayo Clinic Care Network is a centerpiece of Mayo Clinic’s evolved health care delivery model. The network, launched in September 2011, now includes 25 members. The Mayo Clinic Care Network is a network of like-minded organizations which share a common commitment to improving the delivery of health care in their communities through high-quality, data-driven, evidence-based medical care. The network recognizes that people prefer to get their health care close to home. The main goal of the network is to help people gain the benefits of Mayo Clinic expertise without having to travel to a Mayo Clinic facility. Altru Health System, Grand Forks, ND was the first to join Mayo Clinic Care Network on September 14, 2011. WellStar Health System in Atlanta is the newest member. WellStar serves a population of more than 1.4 million residents in five counties and is the largest not-for-profit health system in Georgia with 13,000 employees.

Mayo Clinic continues to invest in systems, processes and clinical research to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of its care delivery model. For example:

• Through innovative and collaborative efforts by Mayo employees, new patient appointments at Mayo Clinic in Rochester increased by 15-percent in 2013. Since the initiative began in 2012, Mayo’s waitlists have decreased substantially.
• One of Mayo’s most important information technology investments is the move toward a single electronic medical record (EMR) across all campuses. Creating and implementing a single EMR will be one of Mayo’s largest IT investments in both time and money and will better serve patients wherever they receive care across Mayo Clinic.

Outside organizations recognized Mayo for high quality health care delivery in 2013. These groups include U.S. News & World Report: America’s Best Hospitals Honor Roll, University Health System Consortium Leadership Award (Top 10), Leapfrog Top Hospitals, Leapfrog Hospital Safety Score (Grade A), Consumer Reports Safety Score (Score >60) and American Nurses Credentialing Center
(Magnet Status).

For the last 150 years, research has been central to Mayo Clinic’s mission. “Mayo’s research shield is integral to our ability to bring the latest advances in medicine to patients,” Dr. Noseworthy says. “It’s why patients come to Mayo — because they want to know that they are getting the best, most up-to-date care.”

Mayo’s three hybrid centers — the Center for Regenerative Medicine, the Robert D. and Patricia E. Kern Center for the Science of Health Care Delivery and the Center for Individualized Medicine — conduct cutting edge research and drastically reduce the time to bring new discoveries to patients and to the world. For example, Optum Labs, Mayo Clinic’s strategic research alliance with Optum Health, through The Kern Center for the Science of Health Care Delivery is an innovative collaborative that analyzes data to answer the toughest questions in health care. Optum Labs recently announced that a number of leading health care organizations are joining Optum Labs, including the University of Minnesota School of Nursing, Pfizer and Tufts Medical Center, among others. Optum Labs has more than 20 major research initiatives currently underway or awaiting publication, including several that are likely candidates for clinical translation projects.

“One of Optum’s greatest tools is its access to the world’s largest and most robust health care clinical outcomes and claims databases, which includes “de-identified” claims data on more than 150 million patients that can be linked with clinical outcomes of 30 million electronic health records,” Dr. Noseworthy says. “The database will lead to unprecedented leaps in understanding what works in health care. The technology allows analysts to turn around queries in a matter of seconds which previously took two to four weeks.”

In 2013, Mayo’s total budget for education and research programs was $912 million; Mayo Clinic contributed nearly $489 million of that total. Mayo research programs received nearly $368 million in external funding in 2013.

Entrepreneurship
“Mayo’s research goes well beyond our walls,” Dr. Noseworthy remarks. “By diffusing and commercializing Mayo’s research and innovation, we are changing the practice of medicine globally. “Mayo Clinic Ventures brings together the ingenuity and expertise of Mayo Clinic staff with the entrepreneurial spirit of business. Between 1986 and 2012, Mayo Clinic Ventures:

• Licensed over 2,000 technologies and we have issued over 1,400 patents.
• Participated in 85 start-up companies
• Returned $300 million to Mayo Clinic from Mayo licensed technology
• Touched 25 million lives through Mayo licensed technology

Quality and Efficiency
Mayo Clinic has slowed full-time employee growth and redeployed our resources to the highest priorities. “Achieving operational excellence was a major focus this last year,” Dr. Noseworthy notes. “In 2013, nearly 60,000 staff members worked differently – leveraging our culture, increasing quality and efficiency and driving down expenses.”

Quality initiatives continue to be significant part of Mayo’s “working differently” culture. There are more than 400 official department/division quality improvement projects in place with hundreds more projects are happening in individual work areas.

“To build the workforce of the future, we continue to foster a diverse, inclusive environment,” Dr. Noseworthy points out. In 2013, for example, Mayo had a record number of academic promotions for women: 46 were promoted to associate professor and 16 were promoted to full professor.

In 2014, Mayo Clinic reduced the rate of its fee increases, despite growing costs associated with new technology and administrative requirements and continues a consistent downward trend across Mayo Clinic — even with challenges such as increasing downward pressure on reimbursement for our care combined with changing consumer demand across the nation for elective medical services.

Destination Care
Mayo Clinic’s 2013 mission-advancing financial performance allows Mayo to strengthen its destination medical center practice and deliver expertise to patients and physicians in new ways. For example:

• Mayo continues several building projects that will serve patients for generations to come. Ongoing building projects include the expansion and modernization of Mayo Clinic Hospital – Rochester, Saint Mary’s Campus, the new Mayo Clinic Health System hospital in Cannon Falls, and Dan Abraham Healthy Living Center Healthy Living Program and Mayo Clinic Sports Medicine Center.
• Community development projects are key to the expansions — The Destination Medical Center in Rochester is one example and Arizona Biomedical Corridor is an Arizona example. These fortify and strengthen Mayo Clinic’s leadership position as a regional, national and international destination for specialized/complex care.

2013 Mayo Clinic Financial Highlights
Mayo also reported a solid 2013 financial performance as it works to strengthen its destination medical center practice and deliver expertise to patients and physicians in new ways.

• Mayo Clinic’s overall financial performance was favorable to plan in 2013 and better than 2012.
• Mayo Clinic finished 2013 with $612 million in income from current activities — or net operating income, which translates to an operating margin of 6.5 percent and aligns with the clinic’s long-term objectives. Mayo Clinic targets a 4 to 6 percent annual operating margin to support its research and education activities, fund salary increases, invest in the pension fund, and provide a source of capital for investing in the future.
• Revenues grew by 6 percent to $9.4 billion; expenses grew by 4.3 percent to $8.8 billion.
• Mayo Clinic’s portfolio realized an annualized investment return of 14.5 percent, which is above benchmarks. A portion of this return supports research, education and operations — nearly $170 million in 2013.
• Mayo Clinic’s pension plan is fully funded. Mayo Clinic contributed $260 million to its pension plan in 2013. Mayo Clinic has contributed $1.1 billion to its pension plan over the past three years. Securing Mayo Clinic’s pension fund is a priority and underscores Mayo’s commitment to its staff.
• Benefactors, primarily grateful patients, contributed $399 million to fund Mayo Clinic programs in practice, education and research.

Click here to access audio from today's news briefing.

Click here for Transcript of Audio News Briefing 2013 Performance Report.

For a copy of Mayo Clinic's 2013 Consolidated Financial Report, please click here.

For more details on Mayo Clinic operational highlights, please click here.

Journalists:  Soundbites from Dr. John Noseworthy and Jeff Bolton are available in the downloads section.

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About Mayo Clinic
Recognizing 150 years of serving humanity in 2014, Mayo Clinic is a nonprofit worldwide leader in medical care, research and education for people from all walks of life. For more information, visit 150years.mayoclinic.org, http://www.mayoclinic.org/ and newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org.

MEDIA CONTACT: Karl Oestreich, Mayo Clinic Public Affairs, 507-284-5005, newsbureau@mayo.edu

The post Mayo Clinic Reports Strong Performance in 2013, Reaching More Than 63 Million People appeared first on Mayo Clinic News Network.

Mayo Clinic is expanding its sports medicine practice to meet the growing regional, national and international demand for its expertise. Edward Laskowski, M.D., co-director of the Mayo Clinic Sports Medicine Center, says, “We have long served professional and amateur athletes involved in a wide variety of sports. This expansion will allow us to better serve our athletes with cutting-edge technology, facilities and programs.”

The Mayo Clinic Sports Medicine Center is a global leader in sports and musculoskeletal injury prevention and rehabilitation, concussion research, diagnostic and interventional ultrasound, and surgical and nonsurgical management of sports-related injuries. The expansion is part of the 100,000-square-foot Mayo Clinic Dan Abraham Healthy Living Center building project, and is scheduled to open in spring of 2014.

Read entire news release: Sports Medicine Expansion

Journalists: Sound bites with Mayo Clinic Sports Medicine experts, Dr. Edward Laskowski and Dr. Michael Stuart, are available in the downloads.

The post Major Sports Medicine Center Expansion appeared first on Mayo Clinic News Network.