Mayo Clinic partnering with Oxford University to open clinic in central London
Mayo Clinic is taking its model of care across the Atlantic.
The Rochester-based medical center is partnering with the University of Oxford and Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust to bring a new state-of-the-art clinic to central London.
The joint venture, set to open this summer, is the first test in a partnership connecting two of the world’s leading brands in academia and medicine.
“We will begin with the clinical offering in London, but it won’t end there,” said Dr. Stephen Cassivi, Mayo’s medical director for the collaboration.
The clinic will be located along Portland Place in central London / submitted
The clinic — officially branded Mayo Clinic Healthcare in partnership with Oxford University Clinic — will offer leading-edge diagnostic and screening services, along with access to a network of 4,000 experts.
The 27,000-square-foot facility will initially be run by a team of four physicians, along with nursing and technical support staff. Two of those physicians will come from Mayo and two from London.
Dr. Cassivi said the clinic represents a unique opportunity for the two internationally-known institutions to demonstrate that they can learn from each other and benefit from each other’s experiences.
“Both partners will learn from this and add to this,” said Dr. Cassivi.
A complete partnership
Located along Portland Place in London, right across from BBC world headquarters, the clinic will be the most outwardly visible component of the transatlantic partnership, which was first announced in 2017.
But beyond clinical care, the Mayo-Oxford collaboration also promises to devote resources to advancements in education and research.
“We are not just partnering with another healthcare institution, but we are partnering with a world-renowned university,” said Dr. Cassivi. “So, this gives us access to knowledge that goes beyond conventional healthcare.”
The synergy between Oxford and Mayo — two institutions that invest in both patient care and the science that leads to better patient care — was a determining factor that led to the development of the partnership.
While initiatives outside the clinical setting have yet to be fully flushed out, Dr. Cassivi said they have already identified shared interest in the fields of oncology, biomechanics, and augmented human intelligence.
“[Augmented human intelligence] is an area that both institutions are quite interested in, have some degree of expertise in, and working together, I think we can make some significant advances,” said Dr. Cassivi.
A template for expansion
For years, Mayo Clinic has reached across the sea for collaborations with international institutions, such as the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden.
What makes the Oxford partnership different, said John Osborn, Mayo’s operations administrator on the initiative, is that “this is the first relationship that we have undertaken that will not only have an academic component, but will also have a patient care component.”
By bringing its three-shield approach to the U.K., Mayo is hoping to evaluate how its model of care can be applied to different parts of the world. In recent years, it has been growing its global reach through its Care Network, a network of hospitals that have access to Mayo resources.
In the case of the London clinic, the venture will take those efforts a step further — allowing Mayo and Oxford to create a template for preventative healthcare that could potentially be implemented elsewhere.
“It’s become an imperative, clearly an imperative for Mayo Clinic, to extend its relevance beyond the United States border and really provide its model of care to those who need it around the world,” said Dr. Cassivi.
The London venture is operating outside of the United Kingdom’s National Health Service — and instead providing plans for patients privately.
The website for the clinic advertises personal and corporate health plans designed to meet the needs of each individual patient. The facility, the site says, will offer an on-site executive lounge and business hubs.
Related: Special report — Mayo goes global
For Oxford, which has been facing budgetary pressures, the collaboration represents an opportunity to diversify its funding streams. For Mayo, in addition to finding new revenue sources, the clinic also has the chance to introduce its nonprofit approach to a new market.
That means putting all financial surpluses generated from the venture toward advancing education, research, and patient care. Keeping with its longtime policy, all physicians at the new clinic will also be salaried — meaning there are no incentives for additional medical intervention.
“That’s a novel situation in the U.K. at this point in private medicine,” said Dr. Cassivi, also the vice chair of Mayo’s Department of Surgery.
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Cover photo: Dr. Stephen Cassivi / submitted
