Mayo Clinic recently extended its international footprint by opening its first office in China.
In June, Mayo Clinic opened an international representative office on the campus of United Family Healthcare in the Jing’an district in Shanghai.
Dr. Stacey Rizza, Mayo Clinic’s executive medical director of the Asia-Pacific region, explained the purpose of the new office.
“The office joins several around the world established to serve people interested in connecting with Mayo Clinic. The Shanghai office staff, fluent in Mandarin and English, will help patients, their families and physicians who refer patients to make appointments at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota; Phoenix and Scottsdale, Arizona; Jacksonville, Florida; and Mayo Clinic Healthcare in London,” she wrote.
The office, which does not offer medical care, works with families, referring physicians, health insurance providers and insurance brokers.
Staff in the Shanghai office assist patients with travel, lodging, billing and insurance arrangements; provide general orientation to Mayo Clinic; facilitate Mayo review of medical records; and coordinate future appointments. They also help to connect referring physicians and insurers with Mayo Clinic.
While this is the first in China, Mayo Clinic has similar international patient offices in Canada, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Panama, Peru, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and Uruguay.
“The offices are part of Mayo Clinic’s work to provide a seamless patient experience and serve as a resource for patients,” wrote Rizza.
When asked if Mayo Clinic was considering opening a hospital or clinic in China as it did in London in 2019, Rizza answered no.
Mayo Clinic, which treated more than 1.3 million patients from more than 130 countries in 2023, has long had an interest in China.
In 2015, Mayo Clinic and Hong Kong-based Medisun Holdings Ltd. signed a collaborative deal to “ensure efficient referral of patients” to Mayo Clinic. That venture ended in 2018.
In early 2018, Mayo Clinic partnered with the WuXi AppTec Group to launch a joint venture called WuXi Diagnostics. The joint venture focused “on the development of advanced diagnostic technologies to create a world-leading clinical special diagnostic platform and integrated research and development of clinical diagnostic reagents and products platform, establish a comprehensive large-scale clinical testing data center, and empower Chinese medical institutions.”
WuXi Diagnostics opened a “research and diagnostic testing development facility” in the One Discovery Square complex in downtown Rochester in 2019. Mayo Clinic described the lab as WuXi Diagnostics’ first U.S.-based research and diagnostic testing development facility. It has since closed.
In February, WuXi AppTec was flagged by the U.S. House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the United States on a list of “foreign adversary” with reported ties to the People’s Republic of China’s military. Rizza stated that the Mayo/WuXi AppTec venture concluded “earlier this year.”
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