Menard Gift to Fund Mayo Clinic Learning System, Luther Midelfort Emergency Center

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

ROCHESTER, Minn. and EAU CLAIRE, Wis. — Mayo Clinic and Luther Midelfort — part of Mayo Health System, today announced they have received $15 million from Eau Claire native John Menard Jr. to revolutionize how Mayo Clinic educates and trains health professionals and to support the new Emergency Services Department at Luther Midelfort.

John Menard Jr. and Randall Linton, M.D., Luther Midelfort's president and chief executive officer tour the construction site of the Menard Center for Emergency Care in Eau Claire.

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The gift will establish Mayo Clinic's Menard Transformational Fund for Education and the Menard Center for Emergency Care at Luther Midelfort in Eau Claire.

"I am so grateful for the exceptional treatment I have received," says Menard. "I believe this gift will make a difference in the future of health care for residents of my hometown and throughout the entire Mayo system."

Construction has begun on the Menard Center for Emergency Care, which is scheduled to open this fall.

"The needs of critically ill and injured patients have outgrown our current Emergency Department," explains Randall Linton, M.D., Luther Midelfort's president and chief executive officer. "Through this incredibly generous gift, Mr. Menard helps to ensure that we will continue to deliver to our community the highest level of emergency care.

"As the only Level II Trauma Center and cardiac surgery program in the region, Luther Midelfort offers access to state-of-the-art care when every minute counts. The Menard Center for Emergency Care will set the standard for high-quality emergency care for community hospitals across the country."

The Menard Transformational Fund for Education will initially be targeted to accelerate development of Mayo Clinic's Enterprise Learning System (ELS), to provide just-in-time, verified information tailored to patients and their providers precisely when they need it most.

"The overwhelming amount of specialized knowledge being created each year through medical research makes it impossible for any individual physician to be completely up-to-date on every disease or condition," says Rick Nishimura, M.D., a Mayo Clinic cardiologist and leader of the ELS program. "We are developing a system that makes sense of the latest research, tailors it to the patient's particular situation and identifies the Mayo Clinic specialists who have the most relevant expertise. Our vision is that all health care providers in the Mayo system would have this information at their fingertips when they are with patients, so that together they can make the best treatment decisions."

Mayo Clinic has begun development of the ELS, starting with a module focusing on long QT syndrome, a heart rhythm abnormality that can cause sudden death. Mayo Clinic has some of the leading specialists and most advanced research in the world on this condition. The ELS will make that knowledge practical for physicians throughout Mayo, letting them know what tests should be run, what the treatment options are, and which Mayo experts they can contact to help review the patient's case.

"We've demonstrated the concept with long QT," says Dr. Nishimura. "We're grateful for Mr. Menard's gift, which will help us develop content for other diseases and conditions and begin making our vision a reality."

Menard says he sees the projects improving the quality of care available to Chippewa Valley residents in Wisconsin and throughout the Mayo network: "I believe in Mayo's philosophy that the needs of the patient must always come first, and I'm excited to be part of their efforts to transform the future of medical education, creating technology that will help all physicians gain the latest medical knowledge at the most critical times.

"I am very humbled that the facility will bear my name," concludes Menard, "but the most important thing to me is that people from my hometown will have access to a bigger, better, state-of-the-art emergency care center, and confidence that they are receiving the best possible medical care. The structural improvements may be the most immediately noticeable, but the top-notch educational training given to our health care professionals will provide results in our community and for all Mayo patients."

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Mayo Clinic is the first and largest integrated, not-for-profit group practice in the world. Doctors from every medical specialty work together to care for patients, joined by common systems and a philosophy of "the needs of the patient come first." More than 3,700 physicians, scientists and researchers, and 50,100 allied health staff work at Mayo Clinic, which has campuses in Rochester, Minn; Jacksonville, Fla; and Scottsdale/Phoenix, Ariz.; and community-based providers in more than 70 locations in southern Minnesota., western Wisconsin and northeast Iowa. These locations treat more than half a million people each year. To obtain the latest news releases from Mayo Clinic, go to www.mayoclinic.org/news. For information about research and education, visit www.mayo.edu. MayoClinic.com (www.mayoclinic.com) is available as a resource for your health stories.