Tag: Mayo Clinic

Where is AI in Medicine Going? Ask The Onion.

Dec 6, 2023

By MIKE MAGEE

One of the top ten headlines of all time created by the satirical geniuses at The Onion was published 25 years ago this December. It read, “God Answers Prayers Of Paralyzed Little Boy. ‘No,’ Says God.”

The first paragraph of that column introduced us to Timmy Yu, an optimistic 7-year old, who despite the failures of the health system had held on to his “precious dream.” As the article explained, “From the bottom of his heart, he has hoped against hope that God would someday hear his prayer to walk again. Though many thought Timmy’s heavenly plea would never be answered, his dream finally came true Monday, when the Lord personally responded to the wheelchair-bound boy’s prayer with a resounding no.”

But with a faith that rivals the chieftains of today’s American health care system who continue to insist this is “the best health care in the world,” this Timmy remained undeterred. As The Onion recorded the imagined conversation, “‘I knew that if I just prayed hard enough, God would hear me,’ said the joyful Timmy,., as he sat in the wheelchair to which he will be confined for the rest of his life. ‘And now my prayer has been answered. I haven’t been this happy since before the accident, when I could walk and play with the other children like a normal boy.’”

According to the article, the child did mildly protest the decision, but God held the line, suggesting other alternatives. “God strongly suggested that Timmy consider praying to one of the other intercessionary agents of Divine power, like Jesus, Mary or maybe even a top saint,” Timmy’s personal physician, Dr. William Luttrell, said. ‘The Lord stressed to Timmy that it was a long shot, but He said he might have better luck with one of them.’”

It didn’t take a wild leap of faith to be thrust back into the present this week. Transported by a headline to Rochester, Minnesota, the banner read, “Mayo Clinic to spend $5 billion on tech-heavy redesign of its Minnesota campus.” The “reinvention” is intended to “to present a 21st-century vision of clinical care” robust enough to fill 2.4 million square feet of space.

The Mayo Clinic’s faith in this vision is apparently as strong as little “Timmy’s”, and their “God” goes by the initials AI.

Sticks and Stones…

Oct 19, 2022

BY KIM BELLARD

According to the old saying, sticks and stones may break your bones, but names can never hurt you. I’m not sure that still applies in a social media environment that can have real impacts on mental health of both teenagers and adults, but I have to note that healthcare seems to be pretty sensitive about who calls whom what.

I’ll start with a new study from The Mayo Clinic about whether patients addressed their physicians by their first name. It’s a tricky thing to get a gauge on; one could do surveys of both populations, or implant observers in exam rooms, but these researchers had the clever idea of examining how patients addressed their physician when using portal messaging. They looked at over 90,000 messages from nearly 15,000 patients, with about 30,000 messages from 15,000 patients including a physician’s name (first or last).

The researchers don’t seem to have provided an overall percent of patients using the doctors’ first name, but they did report:

Female doctors were twice as likely as male doctors to be called by their first name;
DOs were similarly almost twice as likely as MDs to have their first name used;
Primary care doctors were 50% more likely than specialists;
Female patients were 40% less likely to use first names when addressing their physician.

#Healthin2Point00, Episode 208 | Cedar acquires Ooda & funding for Medically Home, Huma

May 14, 2021

Today Jess is bored with consistent $100m+ deals and yawns in the face of the Tiger! No matter– I explain what Cedar acquiring Ooda for $425m means, why $100m for Medically Home is a departure for Mayo but not Kaiser, and what the heck Huma is all about (OK, I don’t really know). Does Jess get more interested by the end? You’ll have to watch to find out!–Matthew Holt

What Keeps United Healthcare, Mayo Clinic & Medtronic Up At Night? | Shaye Mandle, Medical Alley

Mar 2, 2019

By JESSICA DAMASSA, WTF HEALTH

Medical Alley has been bringing together Minnesota’s biggest healthcare players for 35 years, leading collaborative conversations that include the largest health insurance company in the US, United Healthcare, and leading care innovators like Mayo Clinic and Medtronic. So what’s the word on the street…er, alley? Shaye Mandle, President & CEO of Medical Alley, dishes on the neighborhood gossip: the challenge of defining the cost of care delivery, who’s leading the conversation on innovation, and which neighbors are missed at this Minnesota party (looking at you Target and Best Buy — come on over!)

Filmed at the Together.Health Spring Summit at HIMSS 2019 in Orlando, Florida, February 2019.

Jessica DaMassa is the host of the WTF Health show & stars in Health in 2 Point 00 with Matthew Holt.

Get a glimpse of the future of healthcare by meeting the people who are going to change it. Find more WTF Health interviews here or check out www.wtf.health.

Hold the Mayo and Save Our Hospital

Sep 5, 2017• 15

By NIRAN AL-AGBA, MD

There is a grassroots movement, 4300 strong, known as “Save Our Hospital” gaining notoriety in Albert Lea, Minnesota. This story is symptomatic of the fact that hospital consolidation has slowly become a national pastime. With declining revenue under the Affordable Care Act, mergers increased by 70%, leaving small communities scrambling for healthcare access. The latest casualty in the ‘hospital-consolidation-for-sport’ trend is Albert Lea, a small city located in Freeborn County, Minnesota.

Known affectionately as the ‘Land between the Lakes,’ it has a population of 18,000 spread over 14 square miles. Not surprisingly, Mayo is their largest employer; the 70-bed hospital serves almost 60,000 in a region including patients who live in Iowa. In Rochester, MN, the Mayo Clinic is regarded by many as one of the premier medical facilities in the country. Originally of humble origins, founder William Mayo opened a practice during the Civil War and later, passed it down to his sons; today, the Mayo Clinic flagship is located in Rochester, Minnesota and plans to become a renowned premier medical destination for the world.

Corporations with such lofty ambitions tend to make “small” sacrifices along the way; often, on the back of a beloved rural town. On June 12, Mayo clinic administrators announced they would transition all inpatient services to Austin, more than 20 miles away. Mayo cited ongoing staff shortages, reduced inpatient censuses, and ongoing financial difficulties as their reasons for hospital closure. Rural care was mentioned to be at a crisis point, which is an altogether callous assessment of the troubling situation facing communities across this country.

Killing Cancer

Mar 5, 2015• 3

By JOHN IRVINE

As you might expect from a blog, we’re big fans of HBO’s VICE, the cable giant’s slickly-produced answer to staid network news magazine shows like Sixty Minutes. Over it’s first two seasons, the show has established a small cult following with fast-paced, drop-you-down-in-the-center-of-the-action investigations of stories that are usually owned by the major television news organizations.

The recipe works and works surprisingly well as entertainment. It’s also pretty damn good journalism, much to the dismay of traditionalists.

VICE generally avoids slower-moving health care stories in favor of edgy, faster-paced, occasionally subversive pieces that send correspondents to far flung locations around the globe and put their lives in jeopardy as they go places the other guys generally won’t go.

The show’s first two seasons have seen correspondents sent to Afghanistan to report on teen suicide bombers, to Bangladesh to report on the illegal organ trade and to North Korea to a report on a basketball game attended by Dennis Rodman and North Korean Dictator Kim Jong Un.

Killing Cancer, Season Three’s season opening special report, an optimistic hour long episode that airs before the season premiere, is an encouraging exception to the no-healthcare rule that demonstrates that the show may be capable of much more than critics give it credit for.

How Mayo Clinic Is Using iPads to Empower Patients

Feb 26, 2014• 8

By Cook, Thompson, Dearani & Prinsen

Throughout the world, companies are embracing mobile devices to set customer expectations, enlist them in satisfying their own needs, and get workers to adhere to best practices. An effort under way at the Mayo Clinic shows how such technology can be used to improve outcomes and lower costs in health care.

Defining the care a patient can expect to receive and what the road to recovery will look like is crucial. When care expectations are not well defined or communicated, the process of care may drift, leading to unwarranted variation, reduced predictability, longer hospital stays, higher costs, poorer outcomes, and patient and provider dissatisfaction.

With all this in mind, a group at the Mayo Clinic led by the four of us developed and implemented a standardized practice model over a three-year period (2010-2012) that significantly reduced variation and improved predictability of care in adult cardiac surgery.

One of the developments that germinated in that effort was the interactive Mayo myCare program, which uses an iPad to provide patients with detailed descriptions of their treatment plans and clinical milestones, educational materials, and a daily “To Do” list, and to report their progress and identify problems to their providers.

Are Retail Clinics Dangerous?

Sep 28, 2012• 6

By Sanjay Bansu, MD

Target, Walgreens and CVS have recently started medical clinics in their stores. Opening up these “retail clinics” seems both potentially profitable and, at first blush, somehow pushes the lines on our tradition view of where medical services should be located. Giving the concept of retail clinics some thought might reveal store-based providers to be convenient and cost-effective, or alternatively full of conflicts of interest and potential harms. Should we be worried about retail clinics turning into the Walmart of medicine?

The retail clinic industry appears to have grown rapidly over the last few years. Most of these clinics are run by three large chains–Target, Walgreens and CVS–but there are also a mix of smaller providers branching out of existing chains like the Mayo Clinic. Their primary use seems to be the treatment of acute “urgent care” conditions such as symptomatic treatment of upper respiratory tract infections (lots of sore throats), or providing simple preventive care such as vaccinations. Most patients who visit these retail clinics will see a nurse practitioner. According to a recent study that tracked the growth of these clinics from 2007 to 2009, there was a four-fold rise in the number of these clinics, such that there are now over 1,200 retail clinics that see almost 6 million visits per year.

Op-Ed: Healthcare Reform Lessons From Mayo Clinic

Jan 21, 2009• 45

By LEONARD L. BERRY and KENT D. SELTMAN

Three goals underscore our nation’s ongoing healthcare reform debate:1) insurance for the uninsured, 2) improved quality, and 3) reduced cost. Mayo Clinic serves as a model for higher quality healthcare at a lower cost.President Obama, after referencing Mayo Clinic and Cleveland Clinic, advised, “We should learn from their successes and promote the best practices, not the most expensive ones.”

Atul Gawande writes in The New Yorker, “Rochester, Minnesota, where the Mayo Clinic dominates the scene, has fantastically high levels of technological capability and quality, but its Medicare spending is in the lowest fifteen per cent of the country-$6,688 per enrollee in 2006.”Two pivotal lessons from our recent in-depth study of Mayo Clinic demonstrate cost efficiency and clinical effectiveness.