Mayo Clinic Health Policy Center assembles national experts to define vision for new health care system in America

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

BOSTON — Mayo Clinic Health Policy Center has convened more than 30 health care policy leaders this week from across the country at Harvard University to discuss how to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of health care in the United States.

This forum on improving quality and productivity is part of the Mayo Clinic Policy Center's long-term, nationwide initiative to shape the future of health care by uniting many voices into one. The gathering is co-hosted by Harvard's Kennedy School of Government Health Care Delivery Policy Program.

"Mayo is involved in national health care reform because we believe that the needs of the patient come first," says Robert Smoldt, Mayo Clinic's chief administrative officer and co-chair of the forum. "Patients are not well-served by a fragmented delivery system that consumes tremendous resources and produces less-than-optimal care."

In May 2006 Mayo Clinic brought together about 300 leaders representing health care, health plans, public policy, patient advocacy, media and business to begin a dialogue that would elad to a mandate for change. Participants at the meeting identified six key areas for reform. Subsequent forums will focus on honing these recommendations into action principles that will contribute to the formation of public policy.

Jerome Grossman, M.D., director of the Kennedy School Health Care Delivery Policy Program, will also co-chair the forum. Dr. Grossman is an expert on health care delivery, and the program he directs seeks to make health care effective, efficient, accessible and integrated.

"If the nation takes up the challenge to transform the health care system now, current crises can be abated," notes Dr. Grossman. "Costs can be cut, the number of uninsured can be reduced, and more Americans can have access to the quality care they deserve and that we are capable of delivering."

Action principles from this forum, along with those from three other forums, will be presented at Mayo Clinic's next national symposium in January 2008.

Topics covered at the other forums include:

• Insurance for all Americans
• Increasing the integration of care
• Paying for value

For more information about the Mayo Clinic Health Policy Center and its initiatives, visit www.mayoclinic.org/healthpolicycenter.

The Health Care Delivery Policy Program, based at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, provides a frum for the health care industry's leading institutions and analysts to collaborative assess strategic challenges. Visit http://sparky.harvard.edu/m-rcbg/hcdp/index.htm for more information.

Mayo Clinic is the first and largest integrated, not-for-profit group practice in the world. As a leading academic medical center in the Southwest, Mayo Clinic focuses on providing specialty and surgical care in more than 65 disciplines at its outpatient facility in north Scottsdale and at Mayo Clinic Hospital. The 208-licensed bed hospital is located at 56th Street and Mayo Boulevard (north of Bell Road) in northeast Phoenix, and provides inpatient care to support the medical and surgical specialties of the clinic, which is located at 134th Street and Shea Boulevard in Scottsdale.

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