Since opening its doors 93 years ago, the nonprofit Cleveland Clinic has grown to become a world-renowned academic medical center and health system, seeing more than 4 million patients per year.
Here are 10 things to know about Cleveland Clinic:
- Cleveland Clinic has more than 1,400 beds on its main campus and 4,450 beds systemwide. The system consists of a 44-building main campus in Cleveland, eight community hospitals, a children's hospital for rehabilitation, one affiliate hospital and 75 outpatient clinics locally, as well as one facility each in Weston, Fla, Las Vegas, Toronto and Abu Dhabi.
- Cleveland Clinic is led by President, Director and CEO Delos "Toby" Cosgrove, MD. Dr. Cosgrove also serves as chairman of the board of governors. Dr. Cosgrove recently released a book entitled The Cleveland Clinic Way: Lessons in Excellence From One of the World's Leading Health Care Organizations. In it, he describes how Cleveland Clinic is preparing for the future of medicine by keeping the focus on the patient.
- Cleveland Clinic's total operating revenue in 2013 was $6.5 billion, and its operating income was $296 million. At the end of last year, Cleveland Clinic had 320 days cash on hand.
- Currently, more than half of Cleveland Clinic's patients come to its main campus from outside Ohio. To grow these numbers, and to increase the organization's name recognition and national presence, Cleveland Clinic has undertaken a national marketing campaign. This has involved strengthening the Cleveland Clinic brand across all of its facilities, turning the organization from a local medical center to a nationally-recognized brand of healthcare.
Along with robust branding efforts, Cleveland Clinic has led the way in measuring and publicizing its outcomes. This has helped it land bundled payment arrangements with some of the country's largest employers, such as home improvement giant Lowe's, based in Mooresville, N.C., and Chicago-based Boeing, which sought top quality for employees' more expensive and invasive procedures, such as heart surgery. - Cleveland Clinic has also devoted a significant amount (half, according to a 2010 interview with chief marketing officer Paul Matsen) to digital ads to reach the increasingly large numbers of consumers who look online for health information, helping to associate the Cleveland Clinic name with the best in healthcare information in the minds of consumers nationwide. Cleveland Clinic has also grown its online presence, furthering its online branding efforts — the organization's official Facebook page jumped from about 100,000 fans in 2012 to 770,564 fans in 2013. Twitter followers increased from about 55,000 in 2012 to 164,466 in 2013.
- Cleveland Clinic accommodates approximately 1 million same-day appointment requests per year. Staff members answer phone calls with, "Thank you for calling Cleveland Clinic. Would you like to be seen today?" If the caller answers 'yes,' then they are seen that day (or the next if it's after 4:00 p.m.). The emphasis on scheduling patients for same-day visits is part of Cleveland Clinic's focus on patient-centered care.
- In 2013, Cleveland Clinic entered into a strategic alliance with Franklin, Tenn.-based Community Health Systems in an effort to help both systems boost patient quality, reduce costs and improve access to healthcare. As part of the partnership, Cleveland Clinic will work with CHS hospitals to improve clinical integration and heart care quality, and both organizations will share best practices. The alliance is part of a recent trend; similar arrangements have been formed within the past year between Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare and Yale New Haven (Conn.) Health System and LifePoint Hospitals in Brentwood, Tenn., and Duke University Health System in Durham, N.C. Given the relative novelty of these arrangements, many healthcare experts are eager to see how they play out and whether one party may benefit more from the respective acumens of nonprofits and for-profits.
- Cleveland Clinic has garnered many notable awards and recognitions. The most recent U.S. News & World Report's list of Best Hospitals ranked Cleveland Clinic fourth in the nation and the best in Ohio, and the magazine has also ranked the Cleveland Clinic's heart and heart surgery program No. 1 since 1995. Cleveland Clinic's main campus is also a Magnet hospital, and the Ethisphere Institute named it one of the world's most ethical companies.
- Cleveland Clinic has long been a pioneer in medical innovation. Some Cleveland Clinic "firsts" include the world's first coronary angiography in 1958, the first minimally invasive aortic heart valve surgery in 1996 and the first kidney surgery performed through a patient's navel in 2007.
- Cleveland Clinic encompasses three large research and education institutions. Innovations developed at Cleveland Clinic have led to 66 spin-off companies since 2001, including data technology firm Explorys, artificial heart developers Cleveland Heart as well as Shield Biotech, a company developed to design and test a breast cancer vaccine.
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