Mayo

The Economist has a good article on the impact of large hospitals on their surroundings. In particular they discuss the impact of Mayo. This is a mixed blessing.

The good:

The size of the health giants ensures that their reach extends far beyond the examination room. Each, for example, has made its city something of a destination for “health tourists” (people who come for operations or check-ups) and conferees. Rochester received 2.5m visitors in 2007; about 70% of these came to visit Mayo. At the last count, Rochester had the same number of hotel rooms as nearby Minneapolis, which is about four times as large.

The not so good:

For all this activity, community relations remain a work in progress. Mayo has dominated Rochester for so long, donating to a host of local programmes, that the mayor—himself a former Mayo employee—calls the clinic “a gorilla, but...a very nice gorilla”. The Cleveland Clinic's relationship with its city is more complex. Cleveland is much larger than Rochester and much more racially diverse; the city has an industrial hangover and the attendant headaches of poverty and urban decay. The clinic itself sits in a poor neighbourhood where few employees live, preferring to drive in from the suburbs.