Dive Brief:
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The Mayo Clinic announced it will spend $217 million on an expansion and modernization project at its Saint Mary’s campus in Rochester, Minnesota, to accommodate increasing demand and shifting patient needs.
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Over the course of the project, more than 250,000 square feet will be added to existing facilities and the campus cardiac surgery center will be relocated to its own dedicated space.
- The announcement followed recent news that Mayo Clinic will be investing $70 million in construction projects at its hospital in Mankato, Minnesota, and another $70.5 million at its medical campus in Jacksonville, Florida.
Dive Insight:
Mayo Clinic is diving headfirst into numerous capital projects despite potential changes to reimbursement rates and patient volume that could follow passage of federal healthcare reform. In the span of just several weeks, the U.S. News & World Report’s top-ranked hospital has announced more than $357 million in new capital spending.
Following passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, hospitals became more likely to pursue capital projects as certainty around certain policy changes increased, according to a 2015 report from Fitch ratings. The percentage of health systems planning to increase capital spending rose from 45% in 2012 to 53% in 2015.
It is unclear how renewed debate over healthcare policy in Congress will affect capital spending plans at hospitals. While the Mayo Clinic has decided to forge ahead with its capital projects, that might not be the case for other hospitals. There is certainly a lot of uncertainty around the future of healthcare policy at the moment and that has discouraged capital spending in the past, according to the Fitch ratings report.