Baton Rouge General and the Baton Rouge Clinic announced this morning they have joined the Mayo Clinic Care Network, an affiliation of some 40 independent health systems around the country that are able to access Mayo’s knowledge and expertise.
Membership in the network will enable physicians at BRG and BRC to consult on individual cases with Mayo Clinic specialists through digital portals and to utilize a variety of online tools to access information on the latest research, treatments, and clinical protocols.
While some of that information is already available elsewhere on the internet, membership in the network provides unique benefits, officials with both local institutions say, because it will give local patients and their providers a direct pipeline to the renowned Rochester, Minnesota, health care facility and the 4,900 specialists that provide expertise to network members.
“This is all individualized medicine,” Baton Rouge General Chief of Staff Dr. Louis Minsky says. “We take one patient at a time. We look at their data, input information from the local physician, and Mayo picks its best physician to review those materials and give us their opinion. This is individual medicine and you don’t have to get on an airplane to go anywhere.”
Mayo Clinic launched the network in 2011 as a way to leverage its expertise and increase brand awareness in the rapidly changing and increasingly competitive health care market. BRG and BRC are the first members of the network in Louisiana. They were selected for membership after a nearly yearlong vetting process.
“We looked at what BRG and BRC were bringing to their communities and we were satisfied they share that same patient-centric focus we do,” says Dr. Ryan Uitti, medical director of the network’s southeast region.
Membership in the network comes with a hefty annual fee that health care consultants say is in the six-figures, though BRG and BRC officials decline to say how much they are paying for the service.
The cost will not be passed on to patients or insurance companies, they say.
For BRG and BRC, membership in the network and the ability to brand an affiliation with the Mayo Clinic is a significant marketing tool that administrators hope will increase their share of the increasingly competitive local health care market, though they say that was not their motivation in pursuing the arrangement.
“We will know a year from now whether or not it had an effect on market share,” says Edgardo Tenreiro, CEO of BRG, which has about a 25% share of the Capital Region market. “But I would emphasize we are not doing it because of the marketing benefit or the impact it will have on market share. We are doing it because we want to be the best.”
Tenreiro and BRC CEO Ed Silvey say they were each exploring the idea of joining the network more than a year ago, independent of each other, and decided to team up on their collaboration when they learned of the other’s interest.
Membership in the network will not necessarily make it easier for local patients to access drug trials through the Mayo Clinic or to be admitted there for treatment in the case of rare or severe illnesses.
“The network is not intended to do that,” Uitti says. “But it does facilitate those relationships and communications. There is a whole host of things we share with our care network partners but they’re all fundamentally trying to leverage knowledge and experience.”
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