You'll find the Mayo Clinic near the top of the list of the best of the best in medical care. In the media, the Mayo Clinic is depicted as a place where rich and famous people with serious illness go to be treated. You would be hard pressed to find a better brand name in the health care field.

Cost Effective and Superior

One rarely thinks of the Mayo Clinic as a model of cost-effective medicine. Yet they are known for lower than average costs and better than average quality. Mayo Clinic CEO Denis Cortese was interviewed on NPR recently. When asked if the Mayo Clinic could be used as a model for health care reform that could work everywhere, "Yes", he said, "the Mayo model is transportable, but with difficulty".

Salaried Doctors

"The key ingredient is instilling a culture among physicians that puts the needs of patients first", Cortese said. One of Mayo's secrets is putting doctors on salary. One wonders how Mayo is able to attract the best doctors? "Pay at Mayo is competitive and turnover is low, despite the salary approach", Cortese said.

The Patient Experience

"Paying doctors by the procedure, or for treating sicker people can create conflicts", Cortese opined. "When it comes to the patient's experience, taking a doctor's pocketbook out of the care equation makes a big difference."

Cortese suggested that Medicare payments to providers of health care could be based on the value they provide--not the number of procedures they perform. If Medicare paid providers of good value care a little more--enough to give them a 2% profit margin--practices like Mayo's would grow indefinitely," he said. "If doctors end up doing less, keeping people healthier or keeping them at home, they may actually make no money."