Aug 5, 2008 10:41 pm US/Central
Why Is The Mayo Clinic Such A Great Place To Work?
(WCCO)
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What really sets the Mayo Clinic apart from other businesses is that the work value and the needs of the patients come first, according to the authors.
CBS
Every day 65,000 patients, their families and medical staff move in and out of the Mayo Clinic. It is one of the largest, and best, medical practices in the world, and has been for more than a century.
Leonard Berry and Kent Seltman set out to find out what makes the Mayo Clinic tick. They write about it in a new book: "Management Lessons from Mayo Clinic."
"It's a great service organization," said Berry. "And we felt that there were lessons in Mayo Clinic that managers and owners of all kinds of businesses could use."
Lessons that start at the very beginning.
"Well the Mayo Brothers joined the practice of their father who came to Rochester during the Civil War to do physicals on the soldiers that were coming from the state of Minnesota, the new state of Minnesota," said Seltman.
It was the late 1800s and Charles and William Mayo were innovative surgeons -- practicing sterile techniques and using anesthesia before anyone else. They had great success and the family business took off.
"So they then created an organization both with an endowment, and with a culture and management system that enabled the organization to succeed," Seltman said.
"The key at Mayo is, number one, how the doctors work together and collaborate and pool their talent and knowledge. And then the other key is the respectfulness and the dignity with which they treat the patients," Berry said.
What really sets the Mayo Clinic apart from other businesses is that the work value and the needs of the patients come first, according to the authors.
Another key to putting patients first is that employees enjoy working here, in part because of the environment they've created. Music and art are everywhere.
The Mayo Clinic is designed to be a refuge from the painful and frightening realities of medical diagnosis and treatment.
And then there's the "unhurried medicine."
"All my life I've been with doctors who've been in a hurry, or I've sensed that as a patient, that I have my seven minutes, I have to make them count," said Berry. "Mayo Clinic welcomes you as a patient to ask questions and to become more of a full partner in your care."
Berry and Seltman say the Mayo Clinic offers a good prescription for what's ailing the American health care system -- and any American business for that matter.
Because Mayo, they say, is an organization that exists to serve humanity.
"And that is part of what draws everyone to work together and to pull together," said Seltman. "Because everyone is working for something bigger than themselves and actually bigger than the institution itself."
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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