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   From: zpojet@live.com   
      
   On a snowy December afternoon, Brian O’Brien walked out of his final   
   appointment with his doctor at the Mayo Clinic Health System’s St. Peter   
   clinic feeling disappointed and frustrated. The next day, Dec. 10, the   
   clinic closed, as is becoming quite common in rural towns and small   
   cities across Minnesota.   
      
   “I was pretty much devastated, because I've been coming here for a long   
   time,” O’Brien, 72, said. “It always seems to be quite busy, and it's   
   very, very convenient for anybody who lives in St. Peter or even in   
   other nearby towns.”   
      
   Sally Gaugert emerged from Mayo’s St. Peter facility after taking her   
   91-year-old mother in to get her blood drawn, and she was also   
   disheartened.   
      
   This is the second time in two years that Gaugert has had to transition   
   her family’s care farther away from her home in Le Sueur. For years,   
   Gaugert, 71, saw her doctors in town at Mayo’s Le Sueur clinic. When   
   that shut down, she switched to St. Peter, about 15 minutes away. Now,   
   she will have to drive even farther to the Eastridge clinic in Mankato.   
      
   Even on its last day, there’s a steady stream of patients coming in for   
   final appointments. Gaugert, a former special ed teacher, said she’s   
   confused. Mayo Clinic, considered to be the best hospital system in the   
   country, made significant investments into their community not all that   
   long ago, and now they’re taking it away.   
      
   “It’s just sad,” Gaugert said. “It’s senseless. Here we have a huge   
   building and what’s going to become of it? It’s a waste.”   
      
   And it’s not just St. Peter, a town of about 12,000 people, that is   
   losing a Mayo Clinic operation. The giant medical provider closed five   
   other clinics this month — in Montgomery, Wells, Belle Plaine,   
   Caledonia, and the Northridge clinic in Mankato. Elective outpatient   
   surgeries were also relocated out of the Albert Lea facility to Mayo’s   
   Austin and Waseca campuses.   
      
   Mayo Clinic Health Systems, a global medical behemoth that raked in   
   close to $20 billion in revenue last year and reported a $1.3 billion   
   operating profit, has cited the difficulty and expense of staffing and   
   maintaining the medical facilities as reasons for the closures.   
      
   Allan Baumgarten, an independent health care market trends analyst in   
   St. Louis Park, said the closures are likely the result of a changing   
   strategy at Mayo. For years, the globally renowned health system was   
   buying up clinics and facilities across the Upper Midwest.   
      
   “Over the years, Mayo acquired most of the hospitals in southeast   
   Minnesota, plus several in western Wisconsin and Northern Iowa,”   
   Baumgarten said, adding that Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis   
   and Essentia Health’s St. Mary’s Medical Center in Duluth took a similar   
   approach — obtaining primary care clinics and smaller hospitals in the   
   region that could bring in a constant stream of patient referrals and   
   revenue to the main medical campus.   
      
   But Baumgarten said Mayo now seems to be moving away from that model.   
   And he expects more closures in coming years.   
      
   “I think [Mayo Clinic] may have some regrets about having built out such   
   a large network of facilities that have to be maintained and upgraded   
   from time to time,” Baumgarten said. “It's expensive to operate clinics   
   and small hospitals in rural areas, and it's often difficult to staff   
   them, especially with the kind of professional medical staff that you   
   need to offer a full range of services. Even Mayo Clinic, which is, of   
   course, the world-known name brand in medicine, finds it difficult.”   
      
   A Rochester Post Bulletin analysis this fall found that Mayo Clinic   
   Health System has closed 25 clinics in the past eight years.   
      
   https://www.mprnews.org/story/2025/12/19/mayo-clinic-closes-6-rural-minne   
   sota-health-clinics-more-may-follow   
      
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