Mayo Clinic

Mayo Clinic Logo

Mayo Clinic Logo

Main campus in downtown Rochester, Minnesota.

Mayo Clinic is an internationally renowned medical practice based in Rochester, Minnesota, USA. The first and largest facilities of Mayo Clinic are also located in Rochester, but it also runs additional hospitals and physician practices in Jacksonville, Florida, and Scottsdale, Arizona. In addition, Mayo Clinic operates a number of smaller clinics and hospitals in Minnesota, Iowa, and Wisconsin, known as the "Mayo Health System". Mayo Clinic is ranked second, behind Johns Hopkins, among the best hospitals in the U.S. by U.S. News & World Report; in 2006[1], though both in the United States and internationally it enjoys a reputation as providing the best clinical care in the world.

The main building of the Mayo Clinic rising behind the Mayo Medical School student center.

The term "clinic" in the Mayo Clinic's name normally implies a single small outpatient facility. The Mayo Clinic did begin as such, but it is now a comprehensive health care system in its home region of southern Minnesota (the Mayo Health System) and provides a full range of inpatient and outpatient care through its hospitals and clinics. It is also a medical research organization of nationwide scope and global reputation.

The primary value at the Mayo Clinic is, "The needs of the patient comes first." The mission is, "Mayo will provide the best care to every patient every day through integrated clinical practice, education, and research." [2]

In terms of revenue, Mayo Clinic is the state's second-largest non-profit organization, after health insurer Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota. In 2004, the organization took in US$5.6 billion.[3] The education and research activities of the Clinic are funded in part by the net revenues of the clinical practice.

Statistics for 2004: 513,377 unique patients, 2,271,484 total outpatient visits, 130,093 hospital admissions, and 599,002 hospital days of patient care.

Mayo Clinic is significant in the way the medical physicians are paid. In most health care systems, medical doctors are paid based on the number of patients that they see. The more patients seen, the more a doctor gets paid. At Mayo Clinic, medical doctors are paid a salary that is unaffected by patient volume. Salaries are determined instead by the marketplace salaries for physicians in comparable large group practices. This allows the doctors to spend time with their patients and not worry so much about time constraints. Physicians and surgeons have no financial incentive to do more procedures and operations.

Entrance to the Gonda Building in downtown Rochester.

History

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Bronze of the Mayo brothers, "Dr. Will" and "Dr. Charlie", with the Gonda Building of Mayo Clinic behind them.

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

The Francis Building of Saint Marys Hospital.

Dr. Mayo's two sons began their medical education at their father's side, observing and later by assisting their father on patient visits and with autopsies. "Dr. Will" (as he was known) graduated from the University of Michigan Medical School in 1883, and "Dr. Charlie" graduated from Chicago Medical College of Northwestern University in 1888. After graduation both returned to Rochester and joined their father's practice.

In 1883 an F5 tornado struck Rochester, causing a substantial number of deaths and injuries. Dr. W. W. Mayo worked with nuns from the Sisters of St. Francis to treat the survivors. After this, Mother Alfred Moes and the Drs. Mayo recognized the need for a hospital and joined together to build the 27-bed Saint Marys Hospital which opened in 1889; today, the hospital has 1,157 beds.

The Plummer Building.

Dr. Henry Stanley Plummer joined the practice in 1901. Plummer is considered the "architect" of the Mayo Group Practice, and the inventor of many of the systems of group practice which are now universal around the world today in medicine and other fields, such as a shared, individual dossier-style medical record and an interconnecting telephone system.

The Clinic's Plummer Building, designed by Dr. Plummer himself, was the tallest building in Rochester for many years. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1969.

Of note, the Drs. Mayo helped found the medical school at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. Later in the 1970s the Mayo Clinic began its own Mayo Medical School in Rochester.

Today, Mayo Clinic is led by President and CEO, Denis A. Cortese, MD.

Public trustees include:

• Robert E. Allen, Former Chair and Chief Executive Officer AT&T, Basking Ridge, N.J.
• H. Brewster Atwater Jr., Chair and Chief Executive Officer - retired, General Mills, Inc., Minneapolis, Minn.
• James L. Barksdale, Barksdale Management Corporation, Ridgeland, Miss.
• John H. Dasburg, Chair and CEO, ASTAR Air Cargo, Inc., Miami, Fla.
• A. Dano Davis, Former Chair, Board of Directors, Winn-Dixie Stores, Inc., Jacksonville, Fla.
• Bert A. Getz, Chair, Globe Corporation, Scottsdale, Ariz.
• Louis L. Gonda, President, Lexington Commercial Holdings, Beverly Hills, Calif.
• Jerome H. Grossman, M.D., Senior Fellow, JFK School of Government, Cambridge, Mass.
• Honorable Charles T. Manatt, Manatt, Phelps & PhillipsLos Angeles, Calif., Former Ambassador to the Dominican Republic
• Patricia E. Mitchell, President and CEO, Public Broadcasting Service, Alexandria, Va.
• Marilyn Carlson Nelson, Chair and CEO, Carlson Companies, Inc., Minneapolis, Minn.
• Luis G. Nogales, J.D., Managing Partner, Nogales Investors, LLC, Los Angeles, Calif.
• Ronald L. Olson, Munger, Tolles & Olson, LLP, Los Angeles, Calif.
• Hugh B. Price of Counsel Piper Rudnick, LLP, New York, N.Y.
• Frederick W. Smith, Chair and CEO, FedEx Corporation, Memphis, Tenn.
• Anne M. Tatlock, Chair and CEO, Fiduciary Trust Company International, New York, N.Y.

Notable visitors

The Mayo and Gonda buildings. The silver structure in front is one of Mayo's parking structures.

The Clinic frequently treats famous people from around the world. Well-known former and current patients include:

• President John F. Kennedy
• President Gerald Ford
• President Ronald Reagan
• President George H.W. Bush
• King Hussein of Jordan
• Jalal Talabani, President of Iraq
• Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, former president of the United Arab Emirates
• Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen
• Patrick J. Kennedy, member of Congress from Rhode Island.
• Evangelist Billy Graham
• Former Governor / WWE wrestler Jesse Ventura
• Former Honduras Vice President Jaime Rosenthal
• Beatle George Harrison
• Folk singer Art Garfunkel
• Jazz musician Benny Goodman
• Guitar Player Eddie Van Halen
• Bono, member of the band U2.
• Author Ernest Hemingway
• Author Robert Jordan.
• Baseball Great Lou Gehrig
• Football Hero Walter Payton
• Larry Brown, Famous NBA Coach
• Candy Heiress Helen Brach
• Patrick Volkerding, founder of Slackware Linux
• Charles Montgomery Burns, Owner of the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant. Though a fictional character, he visits the Mayo Clinic to learn that he has every illness, but they are in "perfect balance", due to what doctors called "The Three Stooges Effect".

In Pop culture

• In the television series House, Dr. Wilson mentions that Dr. House would have gotten into Mayo Clinic for a fellowship had he not been expelled for cheating when he was at Johns Hopkins Medical School. Also, Dr. Cameron did her internship at Mayo Clinic.
• In the movie Airplane!, Mayo Clinic is referenced by showing an office in Mayo Clinic with shelves lined with mayonnaise.
• In the Simpsons episode "The Mansion Family", Mr. Burns visits Mayo Clinic for a check-up and is found to have absolutely every disease known to medicine - but "in perfect balance."
• In the TV series Grey's Anatomy, Dr. Ellis Grey, mother of the show's main character, was said to have a distinguished career, with tenures at Mayo Clinic and with the U.N.
• On the TV show M*A*S*H*,Col. Henry Blake always made jokes about MAYO Clinic.
• In Mel Brooks' and Carl Riener's 2000 Year Old Man, it is stated that the 2000 year old man has been to the Mayo Clinic.

See also

• Analyze (biomedical software package)
• ECMO (heart-lung bypass machine)
• List of hospitals in Minnesota
• Mayo Clinic Diet - a fad diet that uses the name of Mayo Clinic but otherwise has no connection to it
• Franciscan Skemp Medical Center - La Crosse, Wisconsin

External links

• Official site of Mayo Clinic
• Mayo Clinic College of Medicine
• Jobs at Mayo Clinic
• History of Mayo Clinic