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Susan E. Mazer, Ph.D. Blog

Thoughts and ideas on healthcare

Hi, and welcome to my blog! I'm Susan E. Mazer -- a knowledge expert and thought leader on how the environment of care impacts the patient experience. Topics I write about include safety, satisfaction, hospital noise, nursing, care at the bedside, and much more.

Transforming Care One Step at a Time

February 15, 2013

I am in Rochester, MN, visiting my close friend, Bani Mahadeva, who has been living in the Charter House for 10 years. Charter House is a CCCR, attached to Mayo Clinic, and, as almost all buildings at Mayo, connected for miles to the various venues in Rochester.

We walked from her apartment to the Civic Center for a play; we walked to dinner, to a shopping mall, and the bank — .just everything is right here. Ah! Independence in Minnesota weather is spelled TUNNEL!

Yesterday, I met with Francesca Ripple and Linda Downie of the Center for Innovation (CFI) at Mayo. Started in 2008, the CFI is a kind of incubator for new health delivery systems and methodologies for improving the patient experience.

Actually, its goals are to transform the experience and delivery of healthcare for patients everywhere. This is not so much about “re-invention” as it is about “invention” itself — stepping out of old paradigms into a future that addresses current and forward thinking challenges.

I identify with the challenges of moving a heavily entrenched and studied organization, such as a hospital, from what is known to that which is yet to emerge. Healthcare reform requires “inform” but begs for “new form” — which threatens old thinking and old ideas.

Just so we all know where we stand in history, Florence Nightingale, who took on the British Army hospitals and a most conservative medical system to save lives of dying soldiers, described the internal struggles as “a battle of new ideas against old ideas.” That was the middle of the 19th century. Guess we are still there.