Mayo Clinic: revolutionizing Medicine and Patient Care
Mayo Clinic
The Mayo Clinic’s mission considered the patients' perspective as crucial.
Team leadership was part of the “Patients First” culture.
“It has become necessary to develop medicine as a cooperative science: the clinician, the specialist, and the laboratory workers uniting for the patient's good. Individualism in medicine can no longer exist.” William Mayo
Influenced by the Progressive Era, the brothers developed ideals of providing care with equality, aiming to improve the life of fellow citizens around them.
Mayo Clinic and Plummer Building 1970. Library of Congress
The Origins and Evolution of the Mayo Clinic 2016. National Library of Medicine
Hoping to expand beyond the scope of St. Mary's, Mayo Clinic was founded as a group practice on March 6, 1914. This collaborative practice became a frontier in hospital care, beginning with small labs, creating specialized departments for specific treatments. The Mayo doctors' interest in improving the lives of others around them was reflected in their pricing.
"We know how hard it is for those who have had the misfortune of deaths in their families, of deaths that might have been avoided. What better could we do than take young men and help them become proficient in the profession so as to prevent needless deaths." William James Mayo
The Mayo brothers created a non-profit organization expanding clinic operations. The brothers donated much of their life savings, physical property, and assets to the clinic.
William J. Mayo Visiting South American Doctors 1987. Mayoclinic.org
New Mayo Clinic Building 1973. Ebay.com
Staff received an annual salary and profits beyond operating expenses and salaries contributed to education, research, and patient care.
President Roosevelts speech. KROC-AM.
President Roosevelt leaving Rochester 1938. Minnesota Historical Society
"The patient's best interest is the only interest to be considered, and for the sick to advance knowledge, the union of forces is necessary." Charlie Mayo, 1910.