Reinventing Healthcare in the Age of COVID
In the fall of 2019, the University of Minnesota, University of Minnesota Physicians and Fairview Health Services launched a partnership—branded M Health Fairview—guided by a vision to reinvent the traditional healthcare system through a shared drive to discover a better way to detect, diagnose, and deliver new treatments and world-class healthcare close to home.
The reimagined partnership would advance the University of Minnesota and its Medical School’s shared mission to heal, discover new treatments and cures, and educate the next generation of healthcare professionals—all while more effectively serving the current and future healthcare needs of the state.
Little did anyone know, that just months later, Minnesota—and the world—would be faced with battling a global pandemic with the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus. In a true test of the partnership, M Health Fairview found itself uniquely positioned to lead the state’s response to the pandemic through combining the best of academic medicine, world class care delivery and efficient, innovative operational infrastructure.
In just 72-hours, M Health Fairview transformed a long-term acute-care hospital into one of the nation’s first—and only—hospitals dedicated solely to treating people with severe, confirmed cases of Covid-19.
In March of 2020, Bethesda Hospital began to exclusively treat COVID-19 patients as part of an approach called ‘cohorting’, providing access to breakthrough clinical trials, internally developed COVID-19 testing labs and newly created technology to help in the delivery of care, and allowing providers to learn and adapt quickly by treating COVID patients in one place. Thanks to the tireless staff, innovative thinking and transformational work, Bethesda Hospital maintained one of the lowest COVID-19 mortality rates in the country.
While the fight against COVID-19 continues, and the lessons learned through the development of care protocols at M Health Fairview have shaped treatment across the world, the health system remains focused on its broader vision of improving access to world-class, breakthrough care for all Minnesotans, while also educating the next generation of healthcare professionals.
M HEALTH FAIRVIEW’S 600+ clinical research trials currently underway span the fields of cancer, diabetes, heart health, women’s health, mental health and infectious disease.
Fast Facts
10 hospitals, dozens of clinics, and 3,300 providers providing care across 100+ adult and pediatric medical specialties
The entire health system employs over 30,000 team members, making it one of the state’s largest employee base
Decades-long, evolving partnership with the University of Minnesota means our patients have access to leading-edge clinical trials and breakthrough technology; currently, there are over 600 clinical trials spanning across the fields of cancer, diabetes, heart health, women’s health, children’s health, mental health and infectious disease
- M Health Fairview University of Minnesota Medical Center is home of the world’s first successful open-heart surgery (1952), the world’s first artificial heart valve implant (1958), the world’s first successful pancreas transplant (1966), the world’s first successful allogenic bone marrow transplant (1968), and many other medical milestones.