@jkgraham393 You don't need a referral to go to Mayo. Sometimes doctors make a referral, but I referred myself. You do need copies of all your imaging of your spine and copies of reports and the diagnosis. When you call Mayo, they set up a temporary patient number for you to send in your medical information and imaging. They will review it and let you know if they can help. It may be a wait to get in depending on how many patients they have already and how many urgent cases they have, those get priority. I was told my wait would be about 3 months, but there was a cancellation, and I got an appointment about 5 weeks later. I asked to contact a specific surgeon based on his area of interest and research that was a good match for my case. You can also just send your info, and if they take you as a patient, they assign a doctor. I had been denied help 5 times because my case was misunderstood. I then found other medical literature with a similar case because I looked up a term in the paper of the Mayo surgeon I was considering. I sent that study with my request. I also knew because of the literature I read that the Mayo surgeon would understand the complex symptoms I had with my case, and he did. In getting in to Mayo, it probably helped that I had been denied help for 2 years by 5 surgeons. I wish I had come there first.