Last winter, as the country bickered over death panels, Tea Parties and socialized medicine, a woman quietly observed life in Austin, Minnesota. She visited community centers, hung out with pastors and interviewed workers at Hormel, Austin’s main employer and maker of Spam.

What that cultural anthropologist at Mayo Clinic’s Center for Innovation found is the basis for perhaps the most ambitious attempt to design a new health care model not just for Minnesota but the rest of the country…

“There have been only slight modifications to the current system,” said Dr. Douglas Wood, a Mayo cardiologist leading the project. “That’s not real transformation. We’re trying to do something very different than the rest of the country. We’re trying to transform the way we deliver care to the community, how we interact with people in their every day environment.”

MedCity News, by Thomas Lee, 4/2010

Tags: Center for Innovation, Dr. Douglas Wood, Innovation (Center of)