Good morning Ray!

I agree with your friend! I ran into that "hesitancy" 5 times before I came to Mayo. I could clearly see the problem on my imaging and I had learned a lot before I got to Mayo, so when I met the surgeon at Mayo, I knew I was getting good honest answers, and he helped me. I was also very impressed on how much everyone at Mayo did to make sure I was well taken care of even down to the person who looked up and read what I had listed as food allergies and came and talked to me about my meal. I wasn't handed a hospital menu and told to call the cafeteria; I had a person who came to me. When they need to schedule other appointments, they do that while you wait and print out a schedule for you. When I was at my first surgery consult, the doctor's phone rang, and it was the doctor who had just tested and consulted on my thoracic outlet syndrome the hour before. He was calling to give the results and consult with my surgeon. That didn't happen at other places. I would go to an appointment and find out that test results were sent to the wrong office that I had waited a month for, and the computer network didn't allow the doctor to access the records from another of that facilities campuses, so it just wasted my time and the doctor's time. That is how consulting with 5 non-Mayo surgeons turned into 2 years of waiting, and then I was declined surgical intervention by all of them. It was for the best anyway because I came to Mayo, and if I had known how things would be, I could have come to Mayo first. I thought traveling would make it inconvenient, but not really if you add up all the time and traveling to local appointments that turned out to be a wild goose chase.

Here is the list of insurance that Mayo Rochester accepts. I would also call Mayo to be sure before you proceed.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/documents/commercial-insurance-plan-contracts-minnesota/doc-20203720