Mayo Clinic Board of Trustees approves plans to transform healthcare, improve experience for staff and patients, redesign Rochester campus

(Press-News.org) ROCHESTER, Minn. — Mayo Clinic’s Board of Trustees has approved Bold. Forward. Unbound. in Rochester, a multiyear strategic initiative that advances Mayo Clinic’s Bold. Forward. strategy to Cure, Connect and Transform healthcare for the benefit of patients everywhere. It reimagines Mayo Clinic’s downtown Rochester campus and introduces new facilities with a combination of innovative care concepts and digital technologies that will give Mayo Clinic the ability to scale transformation in ways never before imagined. 

This Rochester initiative is part of Mayo Clinic’s Bold. Forward. Unbound. physical plan to achieve seamless integration of physical spaces and digital capabilities to meet patients’ unmet and evolving needs across all sites. Projects are well underway in Arizona, Florida, La Crosse, Mankato, and now soon in Rochester. 

"Mayo Clinic has a 160-year history of leading the world in healthcare innovation. As part of our Bold. Forward. strategy, we have a once-in-three generations opportunity to redefine the future of healthcare," says Gianrico Farrugia, M.D., president and CEO. "Bold. Forward. Unbound. in Rochester will enable transformation by blurring the lines across hospital, clinic and digital care to help our teams anticipate our patients' needs, accelerate more cures and greater connections to our patients."  

Unique architectural elements and spaces in the new facilities will support hope and healing through nature, sunlight, and horizontally and vertically connected neighborhoods. These community-centered neighborhoods will bring services together around common patient needs and diseases, creating continuous care environments that will serve as patients’ homes while they are at Mayo Clinic.  

Ultimately, the vision is about bringing Mayo Clinic teams and patients together in new ways that are designed to advance teamwork, transform the patient experience, create more cures and improve outcomes.   

"Innovation is part of our DNA at Mayo Clinic because of our incredible staff. The inherent desire of our teams to push the boundaries of what’s possible for patients will once again change the course of medicine for the next century," says Christina Zorn, chief administrative officer. "We will always need a place for our patients to receive in-person care. It’s exciting to imagine what could be possible by seamlessly integrating digital capabilities and physical spaces." 

"We are reimagining Category-of-One experiences both for our staff and the patients," says Craig Daniels, M.D., physician leader of Bold. Forward. Unbound. in Rochester. "Patients expect us to know their needs before they walk in our doors, and our staff want to spend more time on meaningful connections with their patients. With Bold. Forward. Unbound. in Rochester, we can deliver on both. It's a very exciting time to be part of Mayo Clinic."  

Clinical buildings to feature first-of-its-kind design   Bold. Forward. Unbound. in Rochester will introduce five new buildings, related infrastructure and utilities — all with future-oriented design elements.  

"Mayo Clinic is projecting and planning for the next era of care by designing intentionally flexible facilities built to adapt and change to meet the needs of the next 100 years," says Bridget Avikainen, associate administrator for Bold. Forward. Unbound. in Rochester.  

This adaptability is a first-of-its-kind feature in a healthcare facility, thanks to something called a flexible grid. In a typical hospital building, certain floors and spaces are designed for surgery, others for hospital beds, and others for imaging support. All have different specifications, like ceiling heights and materials. In Mayo Clinic's new clinical buildings, specific spaces or entire floors will be able to shift from patient room to operating room, to diagnostic imaging suite as needs change over time.    

The new buildings total approximately 2.4 million square feet of space infused with technology to improve care delivery. Structural and architectural components will allow for future expansion. Existing spaces will also be redesigned to support growing patient needs prior to the completion of new facilities. The total investment of the project is $5 billion over six years. 

A large share of the square footage is reserved for two new clinical buildings at the center of campus. Located on the current Ozmun complex and Damon Ramp sites, these two buildings are planned for nine floors above ground, reaching a height of 221 feet — approximately the height of the 16th floor of the Gonda Building. The foundation, core and shell of the new buildings will support future vertical expansion, up to 420 feet, which is the equivalent height of adding about nine stories to the Gonda Building. Five floors of the new facilities at the Damon and Ozmun sites will connect directly to the Gonda Building, including an inspiring two-story skybridge that will connect these new buildings at the Gonda Building’s 10th floor.    

Neighborhoods that keep people at the center    "Our new facilities are focused on keeping both patients and staff at the heart of the care experience," says Amy W. Williams, M.D., executive dean of practice for Mayo Clinic. "Our vision includes putting everything a patient needs, including labs, imaging, consultations and treatments, near each other in unified care neighborhoods, which both streamlines the patient experience and better supports our team-based care model."  

Neighborhoods and other innovative care delivery concepts will also help challenge traditionally separate concepts of inpatient care and outpatient care.  

"We see a future state where the care we provide is so continuous — and supported by emerging technologies that connect us more meaningfully to patients — that the very definitions of 'hospital' and 'clinic' are blurred, leading to further innovation and transformation," says Dr. Williams.    

Those meaningful connections will be enabled by integrated digital capabilities that fade into the background, allowing care teams to focus on patients.  

"Although the technology will be more advanced than ever, it will be so seamless that our nurses will spend less time interacting with the technology itself — less time clicking, less time documenting," says Sherry Wolf, chief nursing officer, Mayo Clinic in Rochester. "And of course, that means they will be able to spend more time doing what they love: caring for their patients and interacting with their colleagues."

Logistics, parking structures enhance overall patient and staff experience   Among the new buildings will be a new logistics center, planned for the former Lourdes High School site, that will be designed to accommodate Mayo Clinic's long-term growth and ensure that clinical space can be used for patient care. With a planned tunnel connection to the new clinical buildings, the new logistics building will take advantage of innovative technologies like robotics, automation, predictive analytics and other solutions to ensure that care teams always have the right resources at the right time — even without having to request them.     

Two new patient parking ramps will flank the center of campus, providing 1,300 parking spaces with convenient access to a new central arrival experience. In addition to parking, a variety of new solutions will give patients, visitors and staff plenty of options for convenient, safe and seamless access to downtown, including a planned bus rapid transit line.  

As changes begin to take shape downtown, a sequenced set of temporary parking solutions will be introduced for patients and staff. More information will be shared as it becomes available.   

What’s next?     Mayo Clinic has the vision, the people and the tools to continue leading healthcare transformation. 

"Guided by our values and vision to Cure, Connect and Transform, Mayo Clinic is leading the exploration of paradigm-shifting tools in healthcare. Our Platform and AI are opening opportunities we couldn’t have imagined five years ago," says Dr. Farrugia. "In order to harness the full power of these and other rapidly advancing innovations to benefit patients and care teams, we have to evolve the physical infrastructure as well. Bold. Forward. Unbound will allow us to offer more cures, more hope, more comfort and better outcomes to more people more equitably than ever before."

Preparatory work is already underway with the City of Rochester, neighboring properties and the community, along with enabling work such as surveying and traffic studies across the Rochester campus. More significant construction will begin in early 2024. Plans are in place to ensure the Rochester community, Mayo Clinic staff and patients receive information well before changes occur, and every effort will be made to minimize disruption to day-to-day work. A multiyear construction timeline has the goal of opening some facilities as early as 2028, with the project expected to be completed by 2030.   

"There will be many phases of work as we continue growing our practice, education and research amid the transformation of our campus," says Dr. Daniels. "Guided by Mayo Clinic values, we will continue to bring our teams together for the benefit of Mayo patients, staff and the broader Rochester community." 

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About Mayo Clinic 
Mayo Clinic is a nonprofit organization committed to innovation in clinical practice, education and research, and to providing compassion, expertise and answers to everyone who needs healing. Visit Mayo Clinic News Network for additional Mayo Clinic news.

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