Overview

This case study first appeared in the report Luther Midelfort Mayo Health System: Laying Tracks for Success by Jennifer Edwards, Dr.P.H.

Luther Midelfort Mayo Health System, a physician-led, integrated health system serving west-central Wisconsin, has advanced a culture that supports staff in their efforts to test new ideas and improve care. In a recent analysis by The Commonwealth Fund, Luther Midelfort achieved the third-highest score in the U.S. on a composite of 22 process-of-care measures that all hospitals report to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The key components of Luther Midelfort's quality strategy are: exposing clinical leaders to the concepts of quality improvement, then giving them time to work with teams to apply their knowledge; creating expert, interdisciplinary teams for each clinical area to determine the right content of care and then turning over the implementation to a team with expertise in designing workflow and care processes; and rapid measurement and feedback, supported by a quality resources department that coaches teams through improvement cycles.

Disclaimer

The case study or studies included in this Fund report were based on publicly availableinformation and self-reported data provided by the case study institution(s). The aim of Fund-sponsored case studies of this type is to identify institutions that have achieved results indicating high performance in a particular area, have undertaken innovations designed to reach higher performance, or exemplify attributes that can foster high performance. The studies are intended to enable other institutions to draw lessons from the studied organizations' experiences in ways that may aid their own efforts to become high performers. The Commonwealth Fund is not an accreditor of health care organizations or systems, and the inclusion of an institution in the Fund's case studies series is not an endorsement by the Fund for receipt of health care from the institution.