Organizational & Medical Innovation

During the early 20th century, Mayo Clinic was a pioneer in the modernization of medical care.

The clinic began as the frontier doctor's office of Dr. William Worrall Mayo and his two sons, William James and Charles Horace. At the time, the idea of a medical practice as a large organization was revolutionary, but Dr. Mayo could see that health care would in time become an integrated industry with many specialists working together to provide a complex service.

In an age when medicine was a small, private business, the Mayo doctors preached teamwork. In 1910, the eldest Mayo son, "Dr. Will," gave a speech that laid out an argument for a “union of forces” among doctors:

The sum-total of medical knowledge is now so great and wide-spreading that it would be futile for one man to attempt to acquire, or for any one man to assume that he has, even a good working knowledge of any large part of the whole. The very necessities of the case are driving practitioners into cooperation. The best interest of the patient is the only interest to be considered, and in order that the sick may have the benefit of advancing knowledge, union of forces is necessary… It became necessary to develop medicine as a cooperative science; the clinician, the specialist, and the laboratory workers uniting for the good of the patient, each assisting in the elucidation of the problem at hand, and each dependent upon the other for support.

The Mayos put this cooperative approach into practice throughout their lives, shaping the transition from the solo practitioner to the group practice. Believing in the value of collaboration, they traveled throughout the United States and Europe to learn from the best physicians and surgeons. As "Dr. Charlie" put it:

"The problem before us is so to exchange information, and so to education men through travel that there shall develop a final, cosmopolitan system of medicine which will combine the best elements to be found in all countries."

In time the Mayo brothers became known for their superior outcomes: patients began seeking out the clinic for medical care, and doctors began traveling to remote Rochester, Minnesota, to learn new treatments and techniques from the Mayo brothers.

In the nineteen-teens the Mayo brothers and six partners decided to formalize their group practice. They formed a foundation that became the owner of the medical practice, and they constructed the first building designed for the integrated group practice of medicine, with physicians in specialty fields working together. The building housed doctor’s consulting offices, research laboratories, and a new graduate medical education program.

The Mayo brothers' successors continued to be influential in developing new medical treatments and procedures. In the 1950s, Mayo nurses and surgeons developed the first intensive care unit, which allowed all patients to be observed from a central nursing station. In later years, Mayo physicians were leaders in the development of modern clinical trials, in the discovery of cortisone, and in early open-heart surgery using a heart-bypass machine.