Wednesday, March 18, 1998
What ever happened to Gov. Ben Cayetano's efforts to bring a Mayo Clinic satellite facility to Hawaii? Mayo subsidiary,
Queen’s teamed upA Mayo Clinic subsidiary formed a partnership with Queen's Health Systems last year, said Joel Kennedy, Queen's vice president of corporate communications.
Kennedy said Mayo Medical Laboratories and Queen's formed a joint laboratory, called the Queen's/Mayo Medical Laboratories of the Pacific. The lab's intent is to expand business in the Asia-Pacific region, and it is in the early stages of developing plans and marketing efforts, Kennedy said.
He added that Diagnostic Laboratories, a subsidiary 90 percent owned by Queen's, has already set up an office in Guam.
Kennedy said Cayetano's and Queen's efforts helped bring the two organizations together.
"Both forces were at work and coincidently came together rather well," Kennedy said.
He said Queen's began talking with the Mayo Clinic in 1995, but the actual decision to form the lab came two years later.
Cayetano also started wooing and visited the world-renowned hospital in Rochester, Minn., that same year. Two Mayo Clinic executives then came to Hawaii in August 1996 to talk with hospital and business officials.
One of Cayetano's goals is to have in Hawaii an internationally known medical institution such as the Mayo Clinic, which could help establish the state as a "health tourism" center.
However, Cayetano spokeswoman Kathleen Racuya-Markrich said Mayo probably will not build an actual hospital in Hawaii.
"The concept we always had was establishing a presence," she said.
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