Review of The Mayo Clinic: The Golden Standard of Medicine (My Experience)

The Mayo Clinic is probably one of the most efficient organizations I have ever seen in my entire life. Personally I haven’t seen Fortune 500 companies that were that efficient. The Mayo Clinic is located Initially I choose the Mayo Clinic not only because they were ranked #1 for Gastroenterology (I later discovered they were ranked #1 for 20 years) but they seemed to coordinate care well.  In just four days I was able to do two blood tests, one stool test, one colonoscopy, and one MRI exam. Although I live near a very good medical center all these tests would have taken at least one month to do. I was scheduled for an additional MR scan however it was scrapped since I didn’t need it. Every day you can login into MayoClinic.org and get the latest results of tests that were done, doctor’s notes, and see your appointment schedule. I was quite impressed that I had a blood test done before lunch time and got the results on my phone by early afternoon. For the blood test you sit in a room with probably 100 people or so. I was probably one of the youngest patients in the room though. Generally I would say most of the people at the Mayo Clinic where in their 50’s or 60’s. This would make sense though because as you get older you generally have more things wrong with you. However, when I went to the GI area there more younger people but still somewhat skewed toward the older population. When you first get there you wonder how long it will take. However they have 4-5 nurses calling in people to get their blood taken. I asked a nurse how many people get their blood drawn every day and she said between 1,000-1,200 people. The use of technology is amazing at the Mayo Clinic. When you print out your itinerary for the day there is bar code located at the bottom of the sheet that can be scanned to check you in. Although, given this you will be asked at least ten times per day your name and birthday. Typically this would take over a week to get with my existing doctors. There is even an app that you can download to your iPhone, iPad, or whatever other device you may have. As you walk around the Mayo clinic you notice people in dark blue outfits that help you if you if you are lost or want to know the best way to get somewhere.

In terms of eating there are many places to eat. I actually couldn’t eat for about 50 hours due to a blood test and colonoscopy. For the colonoscopy I had to drink 64 ounces of MoviPrep. At first it didn’t taste as bad as the last colonoscopy I had. At any rate one great place to eat near the Mayo Clinic is Chester’s. There is a subway area underneath the Mayo Clinic that has places like Subway, Dairy Queen, a bunch of sandwich places to eat. I was intrigued by how many shops they had in the subway area.

If we want to get anywhere with medical care hospitals really should be compared to the Mayo Clinic in terms of effectiveness and quality. The Mayo Clinic is really the gold standard of medicine which explains why people from every single state travel there for medical advice but in addition around the world.