Mayo Clinic CEO: Prioritize the privately insured over Medicare, Medicaid patients
John Noseworthy, MD, the CEO of the Mayo Clinic, has told employees to give preference to patients with commercial insurance over those covered by Medicare or Medicaid, if the patients have equivalent conditions.
The instructions came in a speech Noseworthy made late in 2016 that was obtained by the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. The motivation, according to Noseworthy, is for Mayo Clinic to be “financially strong” after a 3.7 percent increase in the number of Medicaid patients served by the system.
“If we don’t grow the commercially insured patients, we won’t have income at the end of the year to pay our staff, pay the pensions and so on,” he said, “so we’re looking for a really mild or modest change of a couple percentage points to shift that balance.”
For more on his comments and how it could affect scheduling and patient care, read the full article below:
John joined TriMed in 2016, focusing on healthcare policy and regulation. After graduating from Columbia College Chicago, he worked at FM News Chicago and Rivet News Radio, and worked on the state government and politics beat for the Illinois Radio Network. Outside of work, you may find him adding to his never-ending graphic novel collection.