Mayo Clinic's Unbound team is mapping the way to the future of health care

Sep. 5—ROCHESTER — Mayo Clinic's core "Unbound" team is buzzing with activity on the fourth floor

Harwick Building

as its members work to map out a multi-year, multi-billion-dollar plan by the end of 2023 to transform the future health care and Rochester's downtown.

Mayo Clinic staffers have been working on the

"Bold. Forward. Unbound. in Rochester" project

for two years. While the extended Unbound team includes about 60 people, a core team of 23 people work in the Unbound office.

The Unbound portfolio of projects came to public notice during a

contentious debate at the Minnesota State Legislature

earlier this year. A

public announcement by Mayo Clinic followed in June.

Most of the specific details of the Unbound project have not been announced because Mayo Clinic's Board of Trustees still needs to sign off on the plan in November. The final version of the plan is still being created by the team on Harwick Four.

It has been described as the largest such project ever attempted by Mayo Clinic. The general concept is that using "human-centered design,"

six blocks of downtown Rochester

will be recast with new buildings and infrastructure to better support Mayo Clinic into the future.

While "state-of-the-art" and "future-proof" are phrases often heard from the Unbound leaders, one word you will not hear the planning team say is "hospital."

"Why are we not talking about building a hospital? Clearly, we're gonna build operating rooms and we're gonna build patient care beds. I think the reason we're not calling it a hospital is because we want to elevate what we're trying to do at Mayo Clinic," explained Dr. Craig Daniels, a pulmonary and critical care physician who is co-leading the initiative. "We want it to be different ... to be better. We want it to provide better care opportunities than a current typical hospital."

While it is not finalized yet, the plan to date is to demolish Mayo Clinic's Ozmun West, Ozmun Center and Ozmun East buildings, the Damon parking ramp, the former Lourdes High School complex and the closed Fifth Avenue Inn & Suites hotel.

Bridget Avikainen, Unbound's chief administrator and co-leader with Daniels, explained current thoughts on what will be built on those sites, as well as on Mayo Clinic Lot 29 and the open lot where the Travelers Hotel stood.

"We're still in our schematic design concept planning. We're looking at five primary built structures. Two would be serving clinical functions on the Damon building site and the Ozmun building site," she said in a recent interview at the Unbound offices. "Parking infrastructure would be built both to the north and the south of the Ozmun site."

Looking into the future, Avikainen predicted that patients could start being treated in the Damon site clinical building by 2027 and in the Ozmun site building by around 2030.

The former Lourdes school complex, at 621 W. Center St., is also expected to be cleared away. A West Logistics building is earmarked to be built there.

Daniels pointed out there will be a lot more construction beyond just building the main structures.

"There will be an extensive amount of utility infrastructure ... skyways and tunnels, underground work to connect this portfolio of projects all together to make sure it all works," he said.

Connectivity is a key part of Unbound. The vision includes a

central "front door" entrance to Mayo Clinic

to simplify what can be an overwhelming experience for patients new to Mayo Clinic.

Dr. Katie Arendt, vice chairwoman of Unbound, said to improve the experiences of patients, as well as the experiences of Mayo Clinic staffers, the team has been shadowing patients, nurses, therapists and others. It is also collecting feedback from the community.

That information is being used to create a "human-centered" plan.

"Our No. 1 goal is to increase our ability to deliver world-class care for patients recognizing that those patients will always have evolving needs that are constantly changing," she said. "We're figuring out the thousands of ways people enter into our facilities and use them, so we can improve things to allow people to experience Mayo in the way that best fits them and helps them heal."

As an example, the Unbound redesign could reduce the long distances patients have to travel between having their blood drawn to their next appointment with medical imaging. Bringing inpatient care and outpatient care more into sync is another approach.

"We have outpatient clinic buildings and we have inpatient hospitals. They're usually built apart from each other. Sometimes they're attached, like at Mayo Clinic, but in most parts of the world hospitals and clinics are not attached. That isn't serving our patients today who really need a continuous model of connection with their care teams," added Daniels. "We see our patients return to tell us that they were short of breath while waiting for 10 days for an appointment. That isn't ideal care."

The Unbound team is also looking beyond the halls of hospitals and clinics to learn how to make things better for patients and staff. That means visiting and studying airports, athletic stadiums, manufacturing plants, hotels, technology parks and others to learn how those sites serve people. The best of that benchmarking is then incorporated into Mayo Clinic's plan to improve its care.

Daniels is blunt when he says there is room for improvement.

"Health care isn't perfect. Anyone who's experienced health care can imagine ways that it can be better. And if you ask anyone who works at Mayo Clinic, they can all imagine five or six ways that that care could be better. We really are reaching into our staff to try to understand what they see as opportunities as opportunities to improve care," he said. "This is not a top-down project. This is a project where we think our staff hold some of the best ideas to deliver better care at the bedside."

The road map being created by the Unbound team is still in process. Once the Board of Trustees approves the plan in November, Rochester residents might start seeing more physical signs of change on the streets.

Daniels and the Unbound team anticipate that activity will then ramp up in 2024.