Hospitals

Mayo Clinic’s CEO attempts a do-over

The CEO of Mayo Clinic, castigated recently for telling staff to prioritize care for privately insured patients over those with government insurance, said Wednesday that his remarks had been taken out of context.

Dr. John Noseworthy, CEO of Mayo Clinic being interviewed by Dave Lee, morning host of WCCO radio in Minneapolis at the Economic Club

Dr. John Noseworthy (l), CEO of Mayo Clinic being interviewed by Dave Lee, morning host of WCCO radio in Minneapolis at the Economic Club of Minnesota.

The CEO of Mayo Clinic, castigated recently for telling staff to prioritize care for privately insured patients over those with government insurance, said Wednesday that his remarks had been taken out of context.

Dr. John Noseworthy, added that he regrets having used the word “prioritization” in the videotaped talk he gave to employees and first reported by the Star Tribune in Minneapolis.

“I can see why it may have led to a sense that there must be a policy change, but nothing was meant,” Noseworthy told reporters following an address to the Economic Club of Minnesota. “I regret the heartache that that has caused to many patients, because our Minnesota Medicaid and our contracted Medicare patients have exactly the same access to Mayo Clinic for serious and urgent medical issues.”

Noseworthy added that he meant Mayo employees should focus on measures that will help generate savings to cover the cost care for patients whose government-provided reimbursement falls short of private payers’ rates.

“There will be continuous pressure and reduced reimbursement for the work that we do,” Noseworthy told club members. “All the healthcare providers will have to find a way to improve quality and reduce their costs.”

Noseworthy implied that Mayo and other healthcare systems that produce good outcomes should be reimbursed better for their efforts.

“You would think that in healthcare, that if you get the diagnosis right and if you do better procedures with less morbidity and mortality, if you change people’s lives, if you reduce their medications, if you support them and so on, that there would be value added to that and the reimbursement might reflect that,” he said. “That’s not currently the case. We’re working with CMS on this.”

The agency should employ risk adjustment to properly reimburse health systems that care for patients who are most likely to have the most expensive hospitalization, Noseworthy told reporters separately. That analysis should include a consideration that the patient’s home hospital could not provide the level of care that a system like Mayo could, he added.

Mayo has also been working with the Trump administration on reforming the Veterans Administration health system. It has not been asked for advice on the American Health Care Act, but Noseworthy offered it anyway.

He expressed concern about President Trump’s plan to cut funding of the National Institutes of Health by 18.3 percent, or about $5.8 billion. Noseworthy said he spoke with President Trump, emphasizing the importance of stable research funding to produce new treatments, commercialize biomedical discoveries and foster medical research careers. Under President Barack Obama, NIH gave Mayo a $142 million grant to serve as the nation’s precision medicine biobank.

He also took said Trump’s immigration policies could harm medical research and patients’ health.

“I made the point to Reince Priebus that the nation needs a global talent pool for research and medicine and that sick patients from all over the world must be able to come to America and to the Mayo Clinic for their health,” Noseworthy recalled saying to Trump’s chief of staff.

Headquartered in Rochester, Minnesota, Mayo Clinic employs 64,000 in five states. It treats 1.3 million patients per year from 50 states and 140 countries, and invests more than $900 million in research and education annually, Noseworthy noted. 

Mayo has been making strategic investments in improving quality and reducing costs since 2009, according to Noseworthy. It weathered the recession and changes wrought by the Affordable Care Act, and continues to work with CMS to demonstrate how it has been cutting costs while providing care to patients with complex medical needs.

“It’s been a wild ride, a time of unprecedented change, but these challenges present wonderful opportunities for Mayo Clinic and its staff to make organizational adjustments and to innovate,” he said.

Photo: Economic Club

 

 

 

 

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