Mayo Clinic is a non-profit organization and internationally renowned medical practice. Its headquarters consist of the Mayo Medical School, the Mayo Graduate School, the Mayo College of Graduate Medical Education, and several other health science schools. Its research facilities are in Rochester, Minnesota, in addition to hospitals and clinics in Jacksonville, Florida, Scottsdale, Arizona, and Phoenix, Arizona. Mayo Clinic partners with a number of smaller clinics and hospitals in Minnesota, Iowa, and Wisconsin, an organization known as the "Mayo Health System."

For historical reasons, the institution is called "Mayo Clinic," rather than "The Mayo Clinic" or "Mayo's Clinic." The clinic started as a single, small outpatient facility, and later became America's first integrated group practice, a model that is now standard in the United States.

Mayo Clinic pays medical doctors a fixed salary that is unaffected by patient volume. This practice is thought to decrease the monetary motivation to see patients in large numbers and increase the incentive to spend more time with individuals. Salaries are determined instead by the marketplace salaries for physicians in comparable large group practices.

History

Mayo Clinic evolved from the frontier practice of Dr. William Worrall Mayo (1819–1911) and his two sons, William James Mayo (1861–1939) & Charles Horace Mayo (1865–1939). Dr. William Worrall Mayo emigrated from Salford, United Kingdom, to the United States in 1846 and became a doctor.

The Mayo Clinic founders are Drs. Mayo, Dr. Stinchfield, Dr. Graham, Dr. Henry Plummer, Dr. Millet, Dr. Judd, and Dr. Balfour. These early partners shared in the profits of the private group practice, while other staff hired by the partners were salaried. In 1919, this group created the Mayo Properties Association, and their private practice become a not-for-profit entity. The Mayo brothers, who had retained ownership of all the Clinic properties and furnishings, gave everything to this newly formed association. The integrated group practice has it roots firmly planted in this early private practice and partnership.

In 1892, Dr. Augustus Stinchfield was asked to join the practice by Dr. Mayo, who considered him to be the best doctor in the small towns near Rochester. Once Dr. Stinchfield joined the practice, Mayo retired at the age of 73.

Dr. Henry Stanley Plummer become a partner in the Clinic practice 1901. He is considered by many American physicians to be the "architect of the modern medical practice" and a primary reason for Mayo Clinic's early success. He designed many of the systems which are now universally used around the world today, such as a shared, individual dossier-style medical record and an interconnecting telephone system. While the Mayo brothers excelled as surgeons, Dr. Plummer is largely credited with establishing and developing the diagnostic and clinical aspects of the practice. Dr. Louis B. Wilson was hired by the Clinic in 1907—at Dr. Henry Plummer's urging—to establish research and diagnostic laboratories.