Background of Mayo Clinic

Date Modified: 11/12/2007 1:19 PM

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    It was in destruction that hope was born.

When a tornado swept through the fledgeling frontier town of Rochester in 1883, it destroyed houses and killed 24 people. Dr. William Worrall Mayo and his sons were among those quickly assembled to care for the injured. Mother Alfred Moes and her Sisters of St. Francis cared for recuperating patients.

After the crisis was over, Mother Alfred proposed building a hospital, but Dr. W.W. Mayo wasn’t enthusiastic at first.

When the sisters were able, four years later, to purchase land for a hospital, they built the 27-bed facility with plans and suggestions from Dr. W.W. Mayo and his sons, Drs. Will and Charlie Mayo.

The elderly Dr. Mayo, 70 years old when the new St. Marys Hospital opened, became a consulting physician while his sons saw patients and performed all surgeries at the facility, in clean, modern operating rooms.

In 1901, Dr. Henry Plummer joined the growing practice in Rochester. He implemented many new technologies and advancements in patient care and clinic practice, including what became a model for modern medical-record keeping.

Soon, a cohesive organization known as Mayo Clinic took shape, and patients came not only for the surgical expertise of the Mayo brothers, but because of the clinic’s unique organization and philosophy of patient-centered care.

In 1919, the Mayo brothers turned their private practice into a nonprofit endeavor, giving over most of their life savings to this charitable foundation.

Two additional hospitals were built in the early part of the 20th Century. These were later purchased to create Rochester Methodist Hospital. All doctors practicing at St Marys and Rochester Methodist were from Mayo Clinic.

In 1986, that relationship became even closer when both hospitals merged with the clinic under the umbrella of the Mayo Foundation.

Today’s Mayo Clinic — providing care to more than half a million people via 2.3 million visits annually to three main campuses — is a testament to the organization’s roots as a collaboration between a pioneer doctor’s family and the Sisters of St. Francis who, in the later years of the 19th Century, together created a hospital on the prairie.

Besides bolstering the town by drawing patients and workers to Rochester, the Mayo Clinic and brothers generously supported local sports, civic theater and other projects. Mayo Foundation continues that tradition today.

Patients still travel to Mayo Clinic for its wide-ranging expertise and focus on patient well-being. This medical center offers patients virtually every medical expertise, treatment and diagnostic tool in existence.

While 80 percent of the Clinic’s patients are from Minnesota and surrounding states, about 5 percent come from outside the United States and the rest from distant states.

Patient care programs are supported by extensive programs in medical education and research.

Mayo Clinic is a multi-specialty, group medical practice based on a teamwork approach to health care. By combining their skills, physicians can investigate patient problems thoroughly and obtain help quickly and easily from other specialists. This principle of "group practice’’ remains the hallmark of Mayo today.

About 51,144 people currently work or study within the Mayo system in Rochester, including: 3,305 staff physicians and research scientists and 3,129 residents, fellows, graduate, temporary professionals and students. The clinic occupies a dozen buildings at its Rochester campus, in addition to the three hospitals. Mayo also operates two major clinics in Scottsdale, Ariz., and Jacksonville, Fla., along with satellite clinics and hospitals in some 60 communities in southern Minnesota, northern Iowa and western Wisconsin.

Mayo Clinic occupies approximately 13 million square feet - about 2.5 times the size of the Mall of America.

Among the newest Clinic buildings in Rochester is the $375 million Gonda Building, nestled between the Mayo Building and Rochester Methodist. With 20 stories, some which won’t fill until 2008 or later, the Gonda provides room for Clinic growth, mainly in the areas of diagnostics work and outpatient services. The new three-story, $22 million Dan Abraham Healthy Living Center behind the Mayo Clinic Ozmun Building will provide space for Mayo Clinic employees, retirees, volunteers and their families to exercise. It is scheduled for completion in fall 2007.

But while Mayo Clinic strides toward its future, it remains on firm ground in its past, as well. The 1928 downtown Plummer Building features ornate bronze doors that remain open at all but the most weighty times. The doors were last closed was after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Mayo Clinic’s income from patient care was $4,828,800,000 in 2005. That same year, almost $400 million was spent on research.

The Clinic recorded 132,000 hospital admissions in 2005. Rochester Methodist Hospital has 794 beds available, 41 operating rooms. Saint Marys Hospital provides 1,157 beds and employs more than 3,000 people, making it one of the world’s largest private nonprofit hospitals.