Page 122 - How We Lead Matters

Waiting Room Blues

Rochester, Minnesota, is an unlikely place for a center of excellence in any-
thing other than farming. But it is here that the Mayo brothers set up a med-
ical clinic after a tornado tore apart the community in the late 1800s. For
over a century, the Mayo Clinic has served humankind from presidents and
kings to CEOs and celebrities, moms and dads, children, citizens of its com-
munity, and millions of others, including yours truly. But my interest in
health care started much earlier.
I’m afraid I was a rather poor “spouse’s wife” at the medical conventions
my surgeon husband attended. The side activities the organizers had planned so
carefully for the doctors’ spouses never interested me as much as the conference
topics. I invariably would slip into the back of the room and later engage my
husband in a barrage of follow-up questions. I didn’t know then that I would be
responsible for the health care of tens of thousands of people as the CEO of
Carlson. And I certainly had no idea how much that responsibility would cost.
But the cost isn’t my focus right now, nor is the issue of who pays for it.
My concern is this—getting it right for the patient. As the head of a service
company, I can’t imagine being allowed to stay in business with the number
of errors and the amount of dissatisfaction consumers experience with the
U.S. health care system.
The Mayo brothers said early on that a “union of forces” is necessary for
successful health care, and the Mayo Clinic continues to adhere to that phi-
losophy: The needs of the patient inform the research, and the research
informs the teaching, which translates to improved patient care. It’s a pow-
erful marriage of science, academics, and the clinical in which all three agree
that the patient—the customer—is at the center.
As we work through the complexities of the health care situation or,
frankly, any social challenge that seems to be entrenched, my instinct is to
fall back on the philosophy of those medical pioneers and suggest that it once
again will take a “union of forces” to solve the problem. That union must
include the voice of the customer—you and me. And, ideally, before the next
tornado strikes.

Marilyn Carlson Nelson 105