Elizabeth S. Bermudez, M.D.
Consultant, Emergency Medicine
What moment or experience in your life influenced your decision to be a clinician?
My dad is a primary care doctor in my hometown. Watching his practice through the years showed me the profound impact he had on the lives of others, as well as the sacrifices required to devote oneself to a career in medicine.
What motivated you to become a Kern Health Care Delivery Scholar?
I am passionate about improving the delivery of healthcare by addressing its system-level issues. The emergency department is the safety net of the healthcare system and, as such, often reveals the difficulties patients face in accessing care.
In recent years — especially exacerbated by the pandemic — we've seen the strain of hospital overcapacity and prolonged emergency department boarding times for patients seeking care. While this problem is ubiquitous across the nation, I have personally witnessed the impact on our rural emergency departments. I've been involved in efforts on an operational level to address medical boarding in Mayo Clinic Health System (MCHS). This work has highlighted the complexity of the issue and the need for robust data analysis to inform solutions.
Working in MCHS and serving as a Kern Health Care Delivery Scholar provides an incredible opportunity to leverage the world-class resources of Mayo Clinic to study and, hopefully, improve a critical system-level challenge affecting healthcare delivery in rural communities.
What is your focus and goal as a scholar within the Mayo Clinic Kern Center for the Science of Health Care Delivery?
My Kern Health Care Delivery Scholar Project seeks to understand the patient-centered and financial impacts of emergency department medical boarding in MCHS. It also aims to analyze and model the potential impact of proposed solutions, including the implementation of dedicated telehospitalist management of emergency department medical boarders.
Tell us about your mentoring team.
Molly M. Jeffery, Ph.D., is my primary research mentor. She is the scientific director of research in the Department of Emergency Medicine and a healthcare delivery researcher at the Mayo Clinic Kern Center for the Science of Health Care Delivery. She specializes in how patients and professionals make healthcare decisions, particularly using large datasets. Her work focuses on opioid use patterns, emergency department care and healthcare gaps among vulnerable populations, aiming to improve care quality and patient outcomes. Her expertise is crucial to the success of this project, and I feel very fortunate to learn from her.
Nicole L. Varela, M.D., M.B.A., is my primary clinical mentor. She is an MCHS anesthesiologist and serves on multiple institutional committees to improve care delivery, including Mayo Clinic's Patient Safety Subcommittee, the MCHS Minnesota Quality Committee and the MCHS Minnesota Clinical Practice Committee. She also serves as chair of the MCHS Minnesota Patient Safety Subcommittee. I've appreciated her invaluable guidance and support during our preliminary evaluation of medical boarding in MCHS. Her insights will help ensure that my work as a Kern Health Care Delivery Scholar is clinically relevant and impactful.
In addition to the above mentors, I am extremely grateful for the support I have received from members of MCHS leadership and the MCHS Research Division.
How will your research improve patient care or impact public health?
Medical boarding is a pervasive national issue that leads to poorer health outcomes and increased hospital costs. Numerous studies describe the negative impact of this phenomenon, yet a solution remains undefined. Moreover, most research on medical boarding is performed in urban settings and may not reflect the unique challenges faced in rural communities. My research aims to better understand this complex clinical challenge and inform rural emergency department medical boarding in a way that hasn't been done before.
Why did you choose Mayo Clinic to pursue your career?
When my husband and I were choosing our next career steps together, Mayo Clinic stood out as a place that offered us opportunities to grow and practice in a world-renowned, patient-centered medical center — while living in a safe, family-friendly small city.
Tell us three words that describe you.
Agreeable, calm, hardworking.
Outside of work, what is one thing you like to do?
Kitchen dance parties (often to Disney music) with my two young sons and husband. I also enjoy yoga, gardening, hiking, naps and reading fiction to help balance the chaos of working in the emergency department.