Becker's Hospital Review

57 WOMEN'S LEADERSHIP In a 1st for top MBA programs, women make up majority of Wharton's incoming class By Molly Gamble F or the first time in its 140-year history, the Wharton School of the Univer- sity of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia will welcome an MBA class with more women than men. The incoming 2023 MBA class is nearly 52 percent women, which marks a 10 percent increase in female students compared to last year's first-year class. "If industry truly desires its organizations — and the leadership within them — to reflect the world around us, we must improve the diversity of the pipeline of future business leaders. In short, this crucial work must start here," said Dean Erika James, PhD, the first woman ever appointed to lead the school. Wharton set two other MBA records: The class of 2023's average GMAT score of 733 is the highest ever for an incoming class, and LGBTQ representation reached 7 percent, also an all-time high. Wharton ranks No. 2 among the best business schools in the country by U.S. News & World Report. n Female surgeons have higher risk of pregnancy loss, study finds By Gabrielle Masson F emale surgeons are more likely to delay pregnancy, have nonelective C-sections and experience preg- nancy loss than women who aren't sur- geons, according to a paper published July 28 in JAMA Surgery. Researchers surveyed 692 female sur- geons from November 2020 to January 2021. ey found the median age for fe- male surgeons to give birth was 33, com- pared to a median of 30 for U.S. women with advanced education degrees. Forty-two percent of survey respondents reported a pregnancy loss, more than twice the rate of the average U.S. woman. Nearly half of the surgeons surveyed re- ported major pregnancy complications. A quarter of female surgeons said they had used assisted reproductive technolo- gy, which comes at a significant financial cost and can be tied to physical risks, the study authors told e New York Times. Female surgeons at the highest risk for pregnancy complications were those who performed surgeries for 12 or more hours a week through their final trimes- ter. More than half of surgeons surveyed worked over 60 hours per week during pregnancy, and only 16 percent reduced working hours. "ere's a bravado that goes along with the surgical personality," Erika Rangel, MD, a surgeon at Boston-based Brigham and Women's Hospital and one of the pa- per's co-authors, told the Times. "ere's a culture of not asking for help, but this tells us there's a health risk in it." e authors outline multiple hospital policy changes that would enable female surgeons to ask for help, but note that the change requires a shi in broad-scale policy as well. n Cigna Medicare executive: 'Eyes, ears close to the ground' key to solving hidden problems By Nick Moran A parna Abburi, president of Medicare and CareAllies for Cigna, has been prioritizing keeping her "eyes and ears close to the ground" as she looks to keep up with trends and bolster member experiences. Her eyes and ears are outreach services (such as customer call centers) and relationships with primary care providers. In caring for seniors, being able to use these relationships is the quickest way to identify trends and get ahead of the curve, Ms. Abburi said on "Becker's Payer Issues Podcast." Below is an excerpt from the podcast, lightly edited. Aparna Abburi: Keeping our eyes and ears close to the ground is really im- portant. So I'll give an example. We have a social connector program, and we're very proud of it. What that means is these are individuals that are reach- ing out to our customers based on some of the data and analytics we have — the intelligence from the information to reach out to the customers — and just checking on them, right? So we actually make outbound calls, tens of thou- sands of them, to just make sure that our seniors are getting the care they need. Just checking in to say, "Hey, are you okay? Do you need medication delivered to your home? In the middle of the summer, do you have electricity turned on and cooling fans available?" We're also very proud of a very strong partnership we have at the [primary care physician] level. That's also where we hear in terms of what might be going on in certain communities. So there are multiple ways, multiple mo- dalities in how we gather information on what might be happening and, you know, and sometimes it's just that we all are dealing with societal challenges — whether that's our own loved ones who are seniors and what might be hap- pening to them. Right. So we bring some of those insights as we think about innovation and solutions. n

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