Morning Briefing

The Wall Street Journal: Mayo Clinic’s Unusual Challenge: Overhaul A Business That’s Working

Change is hard. It is especially hard when the organization in question is among the top in its field. Doctors at the Mayo Clinic, the 153-year-old institution that pioneered the concept of patient-centered care, considered it an ideal place to practice, one that wasn’t in much need of fixing. It is renowned for diagnosing and treating medicine’s most complex patients. Dr. John Noseworthy, Mayo’s chief executive officer, had a different view about the need for change. He saw declining revenue, he says, from accelerating efforts by government health programs, private insurers and employers to rein in health-care costs as a looming threat to the clinic’s health. (Winslow, 6/2)