Mayo Clinic

This week, a team of Mayo Clinic chest surgeons released a list of pre-op and post-op quality indicators for lung surgery. The quality guidelines, if effective, should have a significant impact on the clinical world, as lung cancer is more common than colon, breast and prostate cancers combined, notes study leader and Mayo chest surgeon Stephen Cassivi.

To develop their quality indicator list, the team analyzed records from 606 lung-surgery patients, aged 2 to 93. What did they …

For officials at Sioux Valley Hospitals & Health System, it's a dream come true. Executives there had long wanted to reinvent their system in the image of research institutions like the Mayo Clinic, transforming it into a world-class center for children's health research, but didn't have the resources. Enter T. Denny Sanford, a billionaire banker from South Dakota with a philanthropic streak. To allow them to accomplish their goals, Sanford has agreed to donate $400 million to the …

In a move more typical of national governments than states, Texas has announced plans to invest $3 billion in cancer research over the next 10 years. Not surprisingly, the project draws on some of the state's highest-profile research organizations. The state is already home to the Lance Armstrong Foundation, named after testicular cancer survivor and high-profile athlete Lance Armstrong, the Susan G. Komen breast cancer foundation and the acclaimed University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer …

> The AMA has unveiled its 2007 advocacy agenda, which focuses on covering the uninsured and reforming the Medicare payment system. Release

> A new study from the Mayo Clinic says making videogames more active could help fight obesity. The report, published in medical journal Pediatrics, shows videogames requiring interaction resulted in triple the energy output that non-interactive games did. …

After months of angry debate and threats of legal action, Roanoke, VA-based Carilion Health System seems to have finally gained support from its physicians for its planned $100 million restructuring. Carilion doctors had mounted a campaign to oppose the reorganization, including a petition drive and website spelling out their concerns. The opposition leaders, who had planned to spend upwards of $100,000 to fight the reorg, were upset by the health system's plan to convert itself into a …

The Mayo Clinic has signed a multi-year collaborative research deal with Colorado State University, under which the two will jointly develop treatments for cancer and infectious diseases. The agreement should help the university solve the perennial problem of moving cutting-edge discoveries out of the lab and into the hands of treating physicians. For example, a researcher at CSU's Animal Cancer Center recently developed a new way to deliver radiation treatment to patients with …

No one wants to let a critically ill patient die. But in many cases, aggressive treatments intended to prolong the lives of dying patients don't have any effect, according to a recent study of Medicare claims by a Dartmouth researcher. In fact, the death rate for patients with heart attack and colon cancer was five percent higher in hospitals that provide intense end-of-life care. Examples of such ineffective care included cholesterol-lowering drugs for dying patients and …

A group of Mayo Clinic-affiliated researchers studying arthritis drugs has publicly apologized for failing to fully disclose financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry. The researchers, who looked at cancer risks among patients taking Remicade, Enbrel and Humira for rheumatoid arthritis, published the results of their study last year in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The researchers didn't disclose, however, that they had let Humira maker …

Roanoke-based non-profit Carilion Health System is facing significant resistance from doctors as execs move ahead with plans to substantially reorganize operations. The non-profit currently runs eight hospitals, as well as Carilion Medical Group, a 200-clinician practice with 70 offices. Despite creating a system-wide EMR and instituting other initiatives to coordinate care, the health system model isn't working effectively, according Carilion's CEO, Dr. Edward Murphy. He and his board …

In the pre-Google era, back when companies were boring places to work and you didn't have chief officers running around dreaming up wild ideas, life was so much more predictable. This week, BusinessWeek devotes a cover story to the creative corporation, a construction that a lot of people would have branded an oxymoron not so long ago. BusinessWeek looks to the Mayo Clinic as an example of a company that has embraced innovation and expanded far beyond its core business …