Capital Expansion > Building Tomorrow’s Healthcare With Craig Daniels, M.D.

Building Tomorrow’s Healthcare With Craig Daniels, M.D.

By Pete Shooner Illustration by Nazario Graziano

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Bold. Forward. Unbound. is a once-in-three-generations investment across Mayo Clinic to deliver care in ways that have never been done before and create an entirely new Category-of-One patient and staff experience.

In Minnesota, Bold. Forward. Unbound. in Rochester represents a $5 billion investment over six years. It embodies Mayo Clinic's most significant and forward-looking vision for the future of healthcare by integrating our physical and digital infrastructure and blending inpatient and outpatient care. By 2030, Mayo Clinic will transform the Rochester campus and establish a new model for continuous, digitally integrated, patient-centered care.

Craig Daniels, M.D., critical care physician and medical director for Bold. Forward. Unbound. in Rochester, sat down with Mayo Clinic Magazine’s editorial team to provide an inside look at what fuels Mayo Clinic’s vision and motivates him to help lead this transformation. This interview has been edited for clarity.

How will these spaces be radically different from today’s healthcare environment?

We recognize that patients today experience outpatient, inpatient and virtual care — all delivered in different environments — which can feel quite bumpy. With Bold. Forward. Unbound. in Rochester, we are striving to create an environment where care is seamless for patients.

As we began designing the future of care as a single, integrated experience, we realized that traditional outpatient, inpatient and digital spaces would not work. Our spaces must be flexible to meet patients’ needs wherever they are in their Mayo Clinic healthcare journey.

That means designing buildings that do more than house care — they actively support and enhance it. For example, we are creating care "neighborhoods" where diagnostics, imaging, consultations and procedures occur in one continuous environment, reducing the need for patients to move from place to place.

We're also incorporating healing design principles in every element — spaces filled with natural light, expansive winter gardens, and areas of rest and reflection for both patients and their loved ones. We're integrating technology not as a layer on top, but as an embedded member of the care team: ambient intelligence, robotics, predictive analytics and automation will allow our teams to focus more on the human aspects of caregiving.

At Mayo Clinic, we’ve always understood that the physical environment can shape medical outcomes. Just as Dr. Henry Plummer’s vision for the Plummer Building transformed medicine a century ago, this next generation of care environments will transform how we deliver hope and healing — not just for today, but for the next hundred years.

To fully live our primary value — the needs of the patient come first — we must design our spaces with patients at the center.

— Craig Daniels, M.D.

Why is now the right time for this investment?

Healthcare is at the precipice of transformation. As stewards of Mayo Clinic — the world’s leader in healthcare — we must lead this transformation and make Mayo Clinic and all healthcare better for patients and staff.

We have the tools, the technology and an incredibly talented staff who dedicate their lives to improving patient outcomes and experiences. This allows us to solve increasingly complex problems and deliver more cures. Combined with physical spaces in a new healthcare design centering on patients’ needs, we will elevate our collaborative care model to provide even more hope and healing in the world.

This is the moment when digital technology, artificial intelligence, robotics and human-centered design are converging — and Mayo Clinic is uniquely positioned to bring them together to transform how care is delivered.

Bold. Forward. Unbound. is not just an investment in buildings — it’s an investment in people, in tools that reduce burdens on staff, and in care environments that foster teamwork, innovation and healing. These spaces are designed to be flexible and intelligent, evolving with patient needs and medical advancements over the next century.

We cannot stand still. We have clarity of purpose, a shared vision and the momentum to act. Now is the time.

Tell us more about the “neighborhoods.” What is innovative about this concept?

To fully live our primary value — the needs of the patient come first — we must design our spaces with patients at the center. This means centralizing care teams and services around patients' unique needs. Neighborhoods at Mayo Clinic are innovative care environments designed to transform how healthcare is delivered and to elevate the experience of both patients and staff.

Historically, healthcare buildings have been built around departments and specific services. Think about the fact that almost all radiology equipment is located on the bottom floor of a hospital. This means that patients often need to travel significant distances between appointments for their imaging. This is also largely true for laboratory and specialty care.

By creating care neighborhoods, we'll reduce the distance patients need to travel for appointments and more closely situate things they most often will need. We believe they will experience better care, better outcomes and greater comfort throughout their entire time at Mayo Clinic.

These neighborhoods allow our teams to work side by side, surrounded by familiar spaces and supported by curated digital tools — breaking down the boundaries that have historically separated departments and stages of care. This will foster greater team-based collaboration, continuous innovation, and integration of clinical practice, research and education.

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What motivates you most about this work?

The Mayo-Franciscan “RICH TIES” values — Respect, Integrity, Compassion, Healing, Teamwork, Innovation, Excellence and Stewardship — perfectly align with our primary value of putting patients’ needs first. I am driven to live out our values through the transformational work of Bold. Forward. Unbound.

Even at an incredible place like Mayo Clinic, opportunities like this don’t come along very often, and so I am excited for my colleagues and me to directly contribute to building and experiencing these new spaces that will provide even better care to our patients and care teams.

It’s a generational moment to reimagine how we deliver care, to remove barriers for our staff, and to shape a future where patients receive more seamless, compassionate and innovative care than ever before. We’re building something that will carry forward the mission of Mayo Clinic — not just for today’s patients, but for those we haven’t met yet, and for future staff members who will carry this work forward long after we’re gone. That sense of responsibility — of stewardship — is what drives me.