Mayo spending $217 million on construction in Rochester

Mayo Clinic plans to spend $217 million on construction projects at its St. Marys hospital campus in Rochester.

The project, announced Thursday, would help the clinic grow its patient volume and provide those patients better service in more efficient facilities, said Dr. Robert Cima, medical director for the Rochester hospital operations at the Mayo Clinic.

Construction includes expanded space for rehabilitation patients, construction for more private patient rooms, renovation of an intensive care unit for newborns and more room for patients with cardiovascular disease.

"We anticipate continued growth in our patient visits," Cima said in an interview. "We've been seeing that steadily year after year. This is really a commitment to providing access to as many patients as possible."

Mayo Clinic is Minnesota's largest private employer. With health care operations in five states, the clinic in 2016 posted income of $475 million on $11 billion in revenue.

The St. Marys campus, which is about a mile west of Mayo Clinic's campus in downtown Rochester, includes the majority of the clinic's hospital beds in the southeast Minnesota city.

In the past few years, Mayo has invested in a series of expansion and renovation projects at St. Marys, which initially was run by Franciscan sisters who started the hospital in the late 1880s, Cima said. In continuous use for more than a century, the St. Marys campus includes about 1,000 inpatient hospitals beds and 80 operating suites.

The hospital's ICU for newborns already is at capacity, Cima said, and the clinic is fast approaching capacity for cardiovascular services. With the construction project, Mayo is trying to bring together facilities and practices in a more efficient layout that better integrates the expertise of different specialists, Cima said. That will help as the clinic treats "increasingly complex patients as well as more complex procedures," he said.

Dr. John Noseworthy, the president and chief executive at Mayo, said: "This project not only demonstrates Mayo Clinic's commitment to our mission, but also our commitment to the future growth of Rochester."

Mayo Clinic Hospital in Rochester, which includes the St. Marys and Methodist campuses, performed 60,294 surgical procedures in 2016, resulting in 26,934 inpatient stays. Mayo projects an additional 7,800 surgical cases by 2019, with St. Marys seeing an additional 4,275 surgical patients by that time.

Last month, Mayo Clinic announced it would spend $70 million to renovate and expand services at its hospital in Mankato. The clinic also is spending $70.5 million to build four additional floors at its hospital in Florida.

Christopher Snowbeck • 612-673-4744

Twitter: @chrissnowbeck