The Year Ahead

Mayo Clinic is committed to providing the highest-quality medical care. Mayo's mission — to provide best care to every patient every day through integrated clinical practice, education and research — captures what the organization has stood for throughout its history.

In its earliest days, one of Mayo Clinic's founders, William J. Mayo, M.D., stated, "The best interest of the patient is the only interest to be considered." That principle — the needs of the patient come first — has guided Mayo's practice throughout its history and at every Mayo site.

At Mayo Clinic, the patient is the focus of everything we do. Three organizational priorities in 2006 are aimed at ensuring that this patient focus permeates the entire organization, in every department at every location.

In 2006, Mayo Clinic will focus significant effort on improving its ability to:

• Function as a unified organization with multiple locations so that wherever patients are seen, they have the same experience and know that they have access to all of Mayo Clinic's resources.
• Build its culture of quality across the institution, so that every practice is examined to ensure that it contributes the highest-quality care and service.
• Function as a learning organization, committed to constantly improving and sharing what it has learned for the benefit of the entire organization and all of medicine.

Working as one
Mayo Clinic is one organization with multiple locations. No matter where patients are seen, they should experience Mayo's model of care — the highest-quality care and personal service — and know that they have access to all of the resources of Mayo Clinic.

Inside the organization, Mayo is motivated by common goals and values, with staff at all locations dedicated to working together for our patients. Historically, Mayo Clinic has excelled at bringing together teams of specialists to diagnose and treat the most difficult medical conditions. Today, with specialists in virtually every medical specialty committed to collaboration, and connected through common goals and the latest technology, Mayo Clinic has resources unmatched by any other medical institution.

Culture of quality
Mayo Clinic has always been synonymous with quality. As an organization, Mayo Clinic has a culture of quality that allows it to pursue excellence in patient care, to make important discoveries and apply the latest medical knowledge, and to provide great service.

The challenge today is to build on advances in quality to create lasting improvements, spread throughout the organization, that deliver the best outcomes, the safest medical care, and the best in service. Delivering the best outcomes in the most efficient and cost-effective manner creates the best value in medical care.

Learning organization
Mayo Clinic is a learning organization. Education of the next generation of medical professionals is part of the organization's mission, and professional development and information sharing are part of the fabric of the institution. But today, the opportunity to share successes and lessons learned, to work together and build off others' findings, to disseminate new discoveries and innovative ideas across departments, across disciplines and to all staff at all sites, are unparalleled.

By creating an environment in which sharing what we've learned and analyzing everything we do from a quality perspective is second nature throughout the organization, Mayo can improve the quality of medical care, and bring new discoveries more rapidly into medical practice. Mayo has the technology and systems infrastructure in place to support this learning environment. By harnessing these systems and the expertise that exists within the institution, we can improve our care by degrees and support improvement in health care practices across the country.

To accomplish all of these goals, Mayo must function as a single, unified organization, committed to the highest quality and continuous improvement of its practices. Mayo must use all of its resources, learning from one another and taking advantage of the latest medical knowledge, to ensure that Mayo offers the best available care today, and that tomorrow, we will offer even better options for diagnosis and treatment of disease.