Health care is changing, and the ride will be bumpy.
Here's a selection of quotes from 2013 I thought you might enjoy. Best wishes for a safe, healing 2014.
Sister Jean Keniry, on Saint Marys and Rochester Methodist Hospitals becoming one entity called Mayo Clinic Hospital: "It's giving up something that's been part of our heritage for 130 years, and very key to it … but we also are not naive to what's happening in our world."
Bryan Anderson, spokesman, announcing Mall of America Mayo retail closure
Clinic: "learned a great deal about delivering health and wellness … in the retail setting."
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Dr. Eric Boie, Mayo emergency physician: "The number of insured patients will increase substantially under the Affordable Care Act, while … numbers of primary-care physicians and access to primary care will not increase at the same rate."
Dr. Ed Laskowski, Mayo Sports Medicine Center, about planned elite hockey and athletic training: "What we want to do is open the center up to the national and global population."
Chelsi Igel, Olmsted Medical Center nurse, about diabetes simulation of patients' experience: "It's almost like this thing that you cannot get away from — no matter how much you try."
Linda Drozdowicz,fourth-year medical student and "Ukulele Girl": "It's something I would want if I were a patient. It gives them some power, even if the power is only to choose the song they want."
Cathy Kleinbart, Boston, treated at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital and Cleveland Clinic, but prefers Rochester and Mayo Clinic: "I decided to continue to come here. it's a complete inconvenience to my life, but I do it because I feel safe not only in the clinic, but outside. I love the culture here."
Ed Wright, motorized scooter user, Rochester, about the importance of shoveling sidewalks after it snows: "I had to basically take my scooter and go out in the street because they didn't shovel."
Dave Jasperson, volunteer, about the first No One Dies Alone program call: "You hang up the phone and now you have butterflies."
Mayo Clinic Health Systemstatement of plan to cut 82 medical-transcriptionist jobs: "Staff are our greatest asset and decisions that may impact staff are not taken lightly."
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Bryan Anderson, on newborn blood samples after medical-anomalies testing: "The part that contains the blood spot is placed in biohazard containers and is incinerated. The part containing private health information is shredded at the Mayo recycling center."
Pulse on Health is a weekly column by health reporter Jeff Hansel (285-7615). Follow him on Twitter @JeffHansel.
