By Jeff Hansel

Post-Bulletin, Rochester MN 

The departing national CEO of Mayo Clinic does not plan to rest on his laurels when he retires later this month.

Instead, he has accepted an appointment as professor at Arizona State University, and plans a renewed commitment to health care.

Dr. Denis Cortese says he will teach in the business and engineering schools at the university after he retires, according to Mayo Today magazine, a publication sent to Mayo staff and family members.

"I will be working to establish a center for health care delivery and health care policy, which will include bioinformatics, novel diagnostics, personalized medicine, the science of health care delivery and nursing," Cortese told the magazine.

Cortese, a lung specialist, was the driving force at Mayo behind an effort to get health reform on the national agenda.

When it became clear that health-reform would indeed become a presidential campaign issue, he asked Jeff Korsmo, chief administrative officer on the Mayo campus in Rochester, to become executive director of the Mayo Health Policy Center.

This shift led to other changes in Mayo leadership, including, for the first time, a national CEO who will at the same time oversee activities on the Rochester campus.

Dr. John Noseworthy will become national CEO after Cortese retires on Nov. 20. Noseworthy is already overseeing the Rochester campus.

The Health Policy Center developed health-reform priorities after querying business, health and advocacy organizations, and patients.

Cortese himself gained renewed national prominence as he traveled the country stumping on behalf of paying for health-care value rather than volume, coordinating care, reforming the payment system and providing health insurance for all.

Cortese plans to continue with the Institute of Medicine, where he serves as chairman of the Roundtable on Evidence-Based Medicine, according to Mayo Today.

The Institute of Medicine says "evidence-based medicine is defined in the Roundtable's charter to mean that, to the greatest extent possible, the decisions that shape the health and health care of Americans -- by patients, providers, payers and policy makers alike -- will be grounded on a reliable evidence base, will account appropriately for individual variation in patient needs, and will support the generation of new insights on clinical effectiveness."

Cortese will also serve with the Division on Engineering and Physical Sciences at the National Academy of Engineering. And he plans to join the health board for RAND Corporation.

RAND's Web site says that it gets funding from local, state and federal government sources; individuals; charitable foundations; and private firms and earnings from its endowments "that allow RAND to address problems not yet on the policy agenda" (the same approach Cortese has taken with health reform).

News agencies have also reported that Cortese will join the board of Arizona's Pinnacle West Capital Corp., which provides electricity to more than 1 million customers, according to its Web site. Pinnacle West also deals in real estate and venture capital.

Reporter Jeff Hansel covers health for the Post-Bulletin. Read his blog, Pulse on Health, at Postbulletin.com.

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