MayoCare
Our country is constantly asked to make a choice between the moral imperative of providing equitable healthcare and the financial reality of receiving medical care in America. Hospitals are operating inefficiently, and basic care is extremely expensive, increasing the financial burden on the patient. When people can’t pay for their care, they go to emergency rooms. Somebody has to pay, and so the bill goes out to the community, raising costs for future care. Our health care system is already socialized! We need a new model, which is both effective and efficient, to quell the rising costs of medical care. Luckily enough, this model already exists in the Mayo Clinic.
Located in Rochester, Minnesota, the Mayo Clinic is consistently ranked the second or third best hospital in the country, and it operates more efficiently than other hospitals with equal or worse levels of care. A Dartmouth study in 2008 found that Mayo operates in the lower 15th percentile of costs, spending 43% less than UCLA Medical Center, and 37% less than Johns Hopkins. Mayo regularly delivers the highest quality of care without racking up enormous bills.
One of the most important features of Mayo’s success is the integrated model of healthcare. Patient information is shared electronically between doctors, nurses, and other caregivers, eliminating the need for repeat procedures. For example, if a patient broke his arm and came into the ER for an X-Ray, rather than repeating that X-Ray when he meets with a surgeon, the surgeon already has access to that information and is able to determine a method of care without a repeat procedure being performed. Integrated care saves time and money for the patient and the hospital.
This efficiency model carries over into the treatment of doctors as well as patients. One of the things that drives up the cost of medicine is the performance of unnecessary procedures on a patient, sometimes to the financial benefit of the doctor. Many doctors’ salaries depend directly upon the number of procedures they perform, incentivizing excessive care. Mayo, however, pays all of its doctors on a salary basis, meaning a surgeon would make the same amount if she performed 50 or 500 operations in a year.
Mayo’s target philosophy centers around three key points: patients, research, and education. In every area, Mayo seeks to reduce costs without sacrificing care, and some of their most innovative research centers around bringing down superfluous costs and procedures. One example of this research managed to bring down the cost of blood transfusions by $60,000 in three months. Traditionally, doctors looked solely at the hemoglobin count of a patient when determining whether or not to do a transfusion. The clinic, however, found that a computerized model could more accurately predict whether or not a transfusion was necessary, and significantly lower the amount of resources and money needed to treat a patient.
In his 2009, at the height of the health care debate, President Obama often looked to the Mayo Clinic as a model of efficient health care. Many hospitals are hesitant to adopt some of the practices of Mayo, partly because the reputation of the hospital and quality of the doctors gives the clinic an edge. However, the successes of Mayo should allow it to be a template for other hospitals, as an example of how to provide quality and efficient care.
Though the Affordable Health Care Act did not fully adopt the Mayo Clinic model, it incorporated some of the key features of Mayo’s success, ones that encourage both fiscal responsibility and enhanced patient care. The act lays out its own version of integrated care in Title III, looking to cooperative care medicine to lower costs and better meet the needs of patients. Furthermore, Title III encourages research to facilitate “the best of best practices that improve the quality, safety, and efficiency of health care delivery services.” The Mayo Clinic has more than a century of experience and expertise behind its name. Mayo delivers some of the best care in the country without wasting the resources of either the doctors or the patients. The Mayo model should continue to epitomize innovative and effective medical care.