Mayo Clinic has a long history of engineering and making its own tools and devices, but a new printer will catapult in-house manufacturing to a shiny, new level.
Construction is underway in the downtown Baldwin Building to create space for the Mayo Clinic division of Engineering Additive Manufacturing facility. The core of that facility will be a 3D printer or additive manufacturing device that will use “medical-grade, implant-grade titanium” to produce devices, tools and more. Someday, it could even be used to manufacture patient implants.
“It’s a big deal. To my knowledge, Mayo Clinic is the only hospital not connected to an university engineering department installing a 3D metal printer,” said Laralyn McDaniel of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. “It’s a considerable leap, particularly within hospital setting.”
SINGLE-PAYER HEALTH care can work. Government-run systems operate in other industrialized countries and often achieve comparable or better overall results, for less money, than the health-care patchwork in the United States. So why aren’t Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) proposing something that resembles those systems?
The two presidential candidates promise far more generous benefits than other countries offer. They pretend that the United States wouldn’t have to make any of the trade-offs other nations have had to make. They promise fantastically generous benefits, no premiums, co-payments or other cost-sharing, and a miraculously low price tag. It’s fiction.
Mr. Sanders points to government-run systems abroad to claim that his Medicare-for-all plan is realistic. But his differs from those in substantial ways. Meanwhile, Ms. Warren last week released a detailed explanation purporting to show how her system would function and, crucially, how the federal treasury could finance such a vast entitlement expansion. The result is inescapable: As written, it couldn’t.
Bernard Tyson, chief executive officer at Kaiser Permanente, died Sunday.
Photo:
ANDREW DAVIS for The Wall Street Journal
Kaiser Permanente Chief Executive
Bernard Tyson,
a high-profile voice in U.S. health policy, died unexpectedly Sunday.
Mr.
Tyson, CEO of the Oakland, Calif.-based nonprofit hospital system and
health insurer since 2013, died unexpectedly in his sleep, Kaiser said
in a statement. He was 60. “Bernard was an exceptional colleague, a
passionate leader, and an honorable man,” said Kaiser board member
Edward Pei.
“We will greatly miss him.”
Kaiser named Gregory Adams, an executive vice president and group president, as interim chief executive and chairman.
Mr. Tyson joined Kaiser Permanente roughly 30 years ago and
held roles in hospital and health plan operations before succeeding
George Halvorson as CEO, Kaiser said. As he rose through the ranks at
Kaiser Permanente, Mr. Tyson became a prominent voice for the type of
integrated care the nonprofit system delivers, with the
health-insurance, hospital and doctor services all closely tied
together.
Kaiser Permanente expanded into medical education and new markets under Mr. Tyson, who in 2015 announced the nonprofit would launch a medical school
in Southern California. The school is expected to be open in the summer
of 2020. Also in 2015, Mr. Tyson unveiled plans to acquire a Washington
state health insurer, a deal that was completed in 2017. The company
also expanded its footprint in California and Oregon, and invested
heavily in telehealth and other technology for digital services, such as
secure emails between patients and doctors.
Kaiser’s
combined health-insurance and hospital operations rank among the
largest U.S. health systems, with $83 billion in annual revenue.
“His
visionary leadership and powerful ideas transformed the health-care
landscape in this country and around the world, allowing people to live
longer, healthier lives,”
Nancy Brown,
chief executive of the American Heart Association, said in a
statement. Mr. Tyson served on the association’s board.
Mr.
Tyson was also a leading African-American CEO, touching on issues of
race relations in some of his public writings and speaking. In 2014, he
wrote about his personal experiences in a LinkedIn post about race
relations, including having a store attendant watch and follow him
around an upscale store where he was shopping. “Even as a CEO, the black
male experience is my reality,” he wrote.
He mentored black
executives and launched an initiative to recruit more black board
members to publicly traded companies as chairman of the Executive
Leadership Council, said Ronald Parker, who served as president and CEO
from 2012 to 2018 of the national organization, which seeks to increase
opportunities for black executives. “He was a beautiful person,” said
Mr. Parker. “Smart. Strategic. Empathetic.”
Kaiser Permanente has
recently been facing some labor strife. A group of 4,000 psychologists
and other professionals had been set to begin a five-day strike Monday,
but said they were postponing it in the wake of Mr. Tyson’s death.
He is survived by his wife, Denise Bradley-Tyson, and three sons; Bernard J. Tyson Jr., Alexander and Charles.
US medical device maker Stryker will buy smaller rival Wright Medical in a deal worth $5.4bn including debt as it seeks to boost its exposure to the fast-growing orthopaedics market. Michigan-headquartered Stryker said on Monday that it would pay $30.75 per share for Wright Medical, a near 40 per cent premium to Friday’s closing share price. The deal has an equity value of $4bn, with a total enterprise value of approximately $5.4bn.
Furthermore, drinking at least three cups of coffee every day may keep arteries healthy and supple by preventing a calcium buildup and staving off the risk of clogging.
