#Mayo clinic phoenix professional

#Mayo clinic phoenix professional

On the day Mayo Clinic Scottsdale opened in 1987, it was 110 degrees! Yet, soaring temperatures did not cause the staff toВ abandon the long-held Mayo tradition of professional attire, ie, suits and ties for men, business attire with color-limited hosiery for women. There were many people in the Scottsdale area who had never heard of Mayo Clinic, which was a big surprise for many coming from Rochester, where Mayo was the largest employer in the city of 65,000 in contrast, the Scottsdale/Phoenix area was home to more than 2 million people. The sign on the external doors that said вЂњPlease check your weapons at the front deskвЂќ startled some former Minnesotan employees. Paint colors and stone work had to blend into the desert setting ( FigureВ 1). Building restrictions in Scottsdale prohibited construction of buildings exceeding a specific height so as not to obstruct the views of the mountains. Rattlesnakes in the stairwells and mountain lions and coyotes on the grounds were an obvious difference. There were certainly differences in the Southwest compared with Rochester. There were several priorities in opening the Arizona campus, including recruiting staff from Rochester to come to Arizona to carry on the Mayo Clinic culture, recruiting other staff from the Southwest to join the Mayo family, dealing with zoning issues, and forging relationships with the Arizona community leaders and the existing medical community. From the time of approval of the expansion to Arizona in 1985 to the 1987 opening, the Hills spent 1 week a month travelling to Scottsdale to oversee the project. According to Dr Hill, вЂњWe found a dynamic metro area with excellent servicesвЂ¦ and there was abundant land to build on.вЂќДr Richard Hill and his wife Barbara were instrumental in opening the Scottsdale campus. Although other locations were considered, such as California and Texas, in the words of our first chair of the Board of Governors in Arizona, Richard Hill, MD, there were many reasons why Arizona was selected. At the time, Phoenix, Arizona, was the largest metropolitan area in the country with neither of those types of practices. According to Robert Smoldt, former Chief Administrative Officer and the head of strategic planning at the time of the Mayo Clinic expansion, a key factor in site selection was the relationship of an area's population compared with the number of academic medical centers or multispecialty group practices with more than 100 physicians. Criteria for selecting the next location included an area where the population was growing to minimize impact on existing local physicians. Chief Administrative Officer Emeritus Robert Fleming tells that there was a decision made to expand not just to one location outside Rochester but to have 2 locations: Jacksonville, Florida, and another to-be-determined site.