Atrium of the Gonda Building of Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, with statue of 'Men and Freedom' by Ivan Mestrovic. 

Not everyone stands at attention when Mayo Clinic speaks on an issue.  But I do.  

In June 2004 my otherwise healthy husband was diagnosed in our local community in central Wisconsin with apparent pancreatic cancer.  What started as an incidental finding on an abdominal CT scan led to a referral to a local surgeon, who urged us to get a Whipple procedure done immediately.  Knowing that was a surgery done rarely in our community (less than a handful a year), and that it had an extremely high mortality rate (in some parts of the country, up to one in five patients who undergo the procedure die from the surgery), we chose to go to Mayo Clinic for a second opinion.

Mayo Clinic's main location in Rochester, Minnesota, is well known to us and only a few short hours away from our home in Wisconsin.  We were aware that their surgeons performed Whipples regularly and had a much lower mortality rate (around two per cent), and felt confident that a second opinion was a wise option.

In early August of that year, my husband underwent the procedure at St. Mary's Hospital in Rochester with an initially good outcome, no malignancy, but happened to be one of those patients who fell on the spectrum of  a full slate of post-surgical complications, necessitating a five-month inpatient hospital stay, nearly three months of which was spent in the Surgical Intensive Care Unit, followed by three more months of outpatient rehabilitation on site at Mayo Clinic.  Total inpatient days were 148, including two brief two-day stays after discharge.  Seventy-eight days hung in the balance in the life-or-death drama of intensive care.

The medical staff at Mayo Clinic worked tirelessly and without complaint to save my husband's life.  His complications, while all treatable, at times seemed insurmountable in combination, but the staff at Mayo continued forward.

It was exactly the sort of hospitalization that could bankrupt not only a family but the system, aggressive medical care which achieved a high end, not necessarily assured, but achievable.  Against the odds, my husband walked out of Mayo Clinic in March 2005 and returned to his life, something that gratified those involved in his care but no doubt surprised even many of them.  

Mayo made a difference.  They made a difference in both the level of care they delivered and the spirit of that care.

It's particularly relevant to the current discussion of health care reform and the letter that Mayo Clinic and eighteen others have written to the United States Congress, because a central point of that letter is the need to address difficulties with Medicare. 

My husband happened to be a Medicare patient who was fortunate enough to also have supplemental insurance.  Between the two, a large portion of the expenses of his prolonged hospitalization and rehabilitation were covered, and the bill was no doubt smaller at the not-for-profit Mayo Clinic than it might have been at other locations in the United States.  Without either, it would have been impossible.

As Mayo Clinic clearly states in its letter to Congress, it cannot continue to deliver that level of care to Medicare recipients, nor can other health care delivery centers around the country, without much needed reforms.  Hospitalizations like my husband's, while unusual, would not even be possible in the situation Mayo Clinic fears in an uncertain future.  If my husband had presented with similar circumstances in another place or time, he might not have had the same outcome, that "better outcome" that Mayo Clinic refers to in its letter, at yes, decidedly "lower cost."

Mayo Clinic earned my respect in the delivery of health care I witnessed first hand for eight months in residence there, and they rightly have a place of respect among patients worldwide who come to a cornfield in Minnesota or its satellite locations for healing and help.  As Mayo Clinic notes in its letter to Congress, health care reforms are much needed and long overdue, but they must address key issues in order to assure what is needed for our country as a patient, a successful outcome.