As Mayo expands its Jacksonville campus — including building the first carbon ion therapy facility in the country — Thielen looks at how Mayo is using technology, pushing transplantation research and more.The following is a brief excerpt from the interview, edited for length and clarity.
We're very fortunate to have the support of benefactors in the region and the community overall. To start our campus, we initially had a 400 acre campus that was provided via the support of the Davis family, and that's given us a really nice space from a land standpoint to be able to grow. Virtual care broadly across the country was something that was happening to a minimal degree before Covid, and then when Covid hit, it made it harder for our patients to seek out care in the outpatient clinical environment. More and more organizations stood up virtual types of options for patients, and we did that: Prior to Covid, probably only 5% of our appointments or less than 5% were done virtually.
Patients may sleep better in their own bed, as opposed to in one of our hospital beds; those types of things that all matters and adds up in the end. Another key strategic areas that we're working on in collaborating with our colleagues across the enterprise, and in many cases, helping lead the efforts from here in Florida, is focused around transforming the future of transplant medicine.