Mayo Clinic

Mayo Clinic is a not-for-profit medical practice and medical research group located in three metropolitan areas: Rochester, Minnesota; Jacksonville, Florida and Scottsdale/Phoenix, Arizona, as well as the Mayo Clinic Health System, which consists of more than 70 hospitals and clinics across Minnesota, Iowa, and Wisconsin. Mayo Clinic also operates several colleges of medicine, including Mayo Medical School, the Mayo Graduate School, and the Mayo School of Graduate Medical Education, Mayo School of Health Sciences. Mayo Clinic specializes in hard-to-treat diseases, and is known for innovative and effective treatments for diseases that had gone undiagnosed or under-treated in the same patients with other doctors. Mayo Clinic is known for being at the top of most accredited quality standard listings. For example, it has been near the top of the US News and World Report of Best Hospitals for 20 years. It accomplishes high medical quality through values such as "The needs of the patient always come first", by coordinating the efforts of its entire group of doctors, and by devoting over 40% of its resources towards research (rather than just medical practice). Mayo Clinic has been on Fortune magazine's “100 Best Companies to Work For” in America list for eight years in a row.

The clinic started as a single, small outpatient facility, and later became America's first integrated group practice, a model that is now standard in the United States. However, Mayo Clinic integrates the practice of over 1,700 medical doctors, making it much larger than the typical group practice of three to 100 doctors.

Since about the year 2000, Mayo Clinic has also become known for achieving high quality at low cost. One extensive study found that the cost paid by insurers to treat Medicare patients in their last three years of life (the most expensive years) was only 54% of comparable costs in nearby clinics and hospitals. Mayo Clinic has been researched and presented many times during the passing of the 2009 healthcare reform bills in US Congress as a model to reduce healthcare costs while increasing quality for the nation. However, Mayo Clinic issued an open letter stating the healthcare reform bills as written in July 2009 would not reduce costs or increase quality nationwide.

Mayo Clinic pays medical doctors a fixed salary that is unaffected by patient volume. This practice is thought to decrease the monetary motivation to see patients in large numbers and increase the incentive to spend more time with individuals. Salaries are determined by the marketplace salaries for physicians in comparable large group practices.

History


Mayo Clinic evolved from the frontier practice of Dr. William Worrall Mayo (1819–1911) and his two sons, William James Mayo (1861–1939) & Charles Horace Mayo (1865–1939). Dr. William Worrall Mayo emigrated from Salford, England, to the United States in 1846 and became a doctor.

The Mayo Clinic founders are Dr. Mayo, Dr. Stinchfield, Dr. Graham, Dr. Henry Plummer, Dr. Millet, Dr. Judd and Dr. Balfour. These early partners shared in the profits of the private group practice, while other staff hired by the partners were salaried. In 1919, this group created the Mayo Properties Association, and their private practice became a not-for-profit entity. The Mayo brothers, who had retained ownership of all the Clinic properties and furnishings, gave everything to this newly formed association. The integrated group practice has its roots firmly planted in this early private practice and partnership.

The nuns of St. Francis were instrumental in building the first hospital of the Mayo Clinic. Mother Moes proposed the idea of building a hospital to Dr. Mayo.

In 1892, Dr. Augustus Stinchfield was asked to join the practice by W.W. Mayo, who considered him to be the best doctor in the small towns near Rochester. Once Dr. Stinchfield joined the practice, W.W. Mayo retired at the age of 73. Dr. Henry Stanley Plummer became a partner in the Clinic practice in 1901. He is considered by many American physicians to be the "architect of the modern medical practice" and a primary reason for Mayo Clinic's early success. He designed many of the systems which are now universally used around the world today, such as a shared, individual dossier-style medical record and an interconnecting telephone system. While the Mayo brothers excelled as surgeons, Dr. Plummer is largely credited with establishing and developing the diagnostic and clinical aspects of the practice. Dr. Louis B. Wilson was hired by the Clinic in 1907—at Dr. Henry Plummer's urging—to establish research and diagnostic laboratories.



The Clinic's Plummer Building was designed by John William Dawson and Ray Corwin from the architectural firm of Ellerbe & Round, with considerable input from Clinic staff, and all under the guidance of Dr. Henry Plummer. At the time of completion in 1928, it was the tallest building in Minnesota and remained so until the Foshay Tower was built in Minneapolis. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1969, and has recently been undergoing an award winning restoration of its bell tower. The Ellerbe firm is the architect of record for the 1914 Mayo "Red" building, the 1922 Mayo Institute of Experimental Medicine, the 1927 "Plummer" building, the 1954 Mayo building, the new 2002 Gonda building, as well as the Rochester Methodist Hospital. The historic 1914 "Red" Mayo Clinic building, a National Landmark listed on the National Register, was demolished by the Clinic in the 1980s to make way for the HGA designed Siebens building. The Mayo campus in Rochester now occupies roughly three times the area of the Mall of America. Mayo Clinic Rochester employs over 30,000 people.

Mayo Medical School
Drs. Will and Charlie Mayo helped found and develop the medical school at the University of Minnesota with a two million dollar gift in 1917. Until the early 1970s, staff doctors were professors at the University of Minnesota medical school. The Mayo Clinic was a pioneer and helped establish the current residency education system. In 1972, Mayo Clinic began its own medical school (Mayo Medical School) in Rochester.

Biomedical Imaging Resource
The Biomedical Imaging Resource (BIR) at Mayo Clinic is dedicated to the advancement of research in the biomedical imaging and visualization sciences. The BIR provides expertise and advanced technology related to these fields, including image acquisition, processing, display and analysis; volume visualization; computer graphics; virtual reality and virtual environments; image databases; computer workstations, networks and programming. The BIR developed the biomedical imaging software Analyze.

President
Mayo Clinic is led by President and CEO John Noseworthy, M.D. In 2007, annual revenue at Mayo Clinic grew 10 percent, to $6.9 billion. In May 2009, it was announced that when previous CEO Denis Cortese retires in November 2009, Dr. John Noseworthy was to be named the new President and CEO.

After his retirement from Mayo in November 2009, Dr. Cortese became director of the Health Care Delivery and Policy Program at Arizona State University (ASU), Foundation Professor at ASU, and President of the Healthcare Transformation Institute. On July 29, 2010, EGHC, parent company of Essence Healthcare and other subsidiaries, announced that Dr. Cortese would join its Board of Directors.

Rankings
In 2011, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, was ranked as the #3 overall hospital in the United States by U.S. News & World Report. A total of 4,825 hospitals were considered and ranked in 16 specialties from cancer and heart disease to respiratory disorders and urology; 140, or less than 3 percent of the total, were ranked in even one of the 16 specialties. Of the 140 hospitals that are ranked in one or more specialties, 17 qualified for the Honor Roll by earning high scores in at least six specialties. Mayo Clinic, Rochester, was ranked in the top 10 in all but one of 16 specialties, in the top 5 in 12 specialties, and was the #1 ranked hospital in four specialties. U.S. News & World Report – Mayo Clinic, Rochester, 2011 Rankings by Medical Specialty