The area surrounding Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, is set to be developed to provide a community for the medical organisation’s patients, visitors and local residents, using public investment that adds up to US$585m (€539m, £392m). This funding is from the State of Minnesota, Olmsted County and the City of Rochester combined.

Lisa Clarke, executive director of the Destination Medical Center Economic Development Agency, is in charge of the strategy and implementation plans for the Destination Medical Center (DMC) – an economic development initiative that will create a community experience for Rochester Mayo Clinic patients and visitors. Speaking at the Global Wellness Summit in Mexico City, Clarke said DMC will position Minnesota as a global premier destination for health and wellness.

Currently, Rochester has 100,000-110,000 people living in the community, however Clarke plans to invigorate the area to make it more interesting experientially.

One of the reasons for the DMC initiative is that 70 per cent of patient time is spent in the community, however there aren't enough high quality experiences to be had in the surrounding area. According to a study conducted by the Mayo Clinic, 34 per cent of patients said they would come back to Rochester for activities of interest – not because they are seeking treatment but, for example, to be in touch with the Mayo Clinic for educational purposes.

"Normal life as we know it is suspended when you go to Mayo Clinic," said Clarke. "You thought you'd be there for two days, but you have to stay for two weeks. Patients have said they want to feel normal at Mayo and that means we weren't providing everything people need: the right food, hospitality, places to pray, sing, meditate, etc. We are becoming more deliberate about this now.”

Patients come with two caregivers on average and these caregivers need to not be neglected – health-wise or experientially – Clarke believes.

So the plan is to create housing, for instance, as Rochester has very little downtown housing, according to Clarke. The health and wellness activity aspects of this new community hub, however, are a priority.

The feasibility study conducted by Clarke's team and Mayo Clinic said that companies across the nation would move to Rochester. "Innovators said they would love to move here – but only if it has the ecosystem required and high quality experiences in a workable, liveable city," added Clarke.

While Mayo Clinic is working with Delos, this green living space concept needs to be rolled out throughout the town too, added Clarke.

DMC is currently engaged in a 20-year planning effort to create the subdistricts to be built in Rochester. Examples of subdistricts planned include ones for wellness, bioscience and transportation.

This new wellness community is expected to create more than 35,000 jobs over the next 20 years – 15,000 of which will be within the Mayo Clinic.

More information about The Mayo Clinic:

The Mayo Clinic serves 1.3 million patients (or what it describes as “health seekers”) a year across its campuses in 144 countries. It has 60,000 employees, 4,200 of which are physicians.

The not-for-profit organisation recorded US$9.8bn (€9bn, £6.6bn) in revenue in 2014 – all of which goes back into research and education.

These reinvestments include:

- Information technology infrastructure: US$1.5bn (€1.4bn, £1bn) over multiple years to fund a new electronic health record and revenue cycle management system, network refresh and data transaction security upgrades.

- Employee pension plan: US$410m (€378m, £275m) contribution in 2014. This includes an originally planned US$220 (€203m, £147m) contribution and an additional US$190m (€175m, €127m) contribution as a commitment to fully fund the pension plan for employees.

- Practice innovation: approximately US$200m (€184m, £134m) in 2014 which includes funding of Mayo’s three hybrid centres — individualised medicine, regenerative medicine and the science of health care delivery — as well as Mayo Clinic practice priorities and information knowledge management activities.

- Education: US$275m (€253m, £184m) in 2014 funding for educational activities.

- Research: US$648m (€597m, £434m) in 2014 funding for research activities — US$276m (€254m, £185m) from Mayo and US$372m (€343m, £249m) from external resources.