Hi @dave You bring up a great question about scheduling with Mayo Clinic and the open ended visits. 7-10 days seems like an odd request when you only have one or two appointments scheduled.

Mayo is quite unique in their approach with patient diagnosis and treatment.
With the initial appointment, the doctors and their specialized teams will review any documents sent with the patient. By doing so, they have a basic idea which medical area of expertise this patient will be directed in consideration to their illness. The interdepartmental collaboration with all Mayo doctors is outstanding! I’m a patient there and have experienced this first hand!

Once you’re in the clinic and evaluated, that’s when the miracle of Mayo starts happening. Tests and procedures are scheduled in a time-frame unparalleled in other medical facilities. The speed, efficiency and flexibility of this clinic allows appointments to happen fast, sometimes within hours or the next day.
In this case you inquired about, they’ve given the woman an approx time of 7-10 days. Each result might bring the need for more clarification with another test or procedure. They want the patient to be there and available for however long this might take. Often patients travel huge distances to be diagnosed so this saves repeated, inconvenient trips for them and also aids in the continuity of the testing phase at Mayo.

Mayo Clinic doesn’t have to send out for results to tests as it is all done in-house. Blood tests are done at lightening speed, imaging and X-rays are read immediately, and biopsies or other procedures performed ASAP without having to go home and wait to be scheduled. That is why they have an open ended time frame for initial appointments. Once all the input data has been read, the teams get together and come up with a game plan and course of action.

The staff at Mayo are committed to patient care and are relentless in the pursuit of finding a cause and cure. They work with the patient’s local doctors to have treatment continued in their hometown if at all possible.

Does that help give you a perspective on the open-ended schedule? I know it feels unreasonable at the time but it’s a system which works amazingly well.