Mayo Clinic Opens CI Representative Office

By Stuart Wilson

The Mayo Clinic has established a representative office in the Cayman Islands to assist patients, their families, health insurers and others interested in connecting with Mayo Clinic.

The office in Grand Cayman, which is the Mayo Clinic’s first here and third in the Caribbean, will make it easier for patients in the Cayman Islands and surrounding area to make appointments at Mayo Clinic locations across the globe.

The Caymanian Times spoke exclusively with Mayo Clinic Medical Director for the Americas, Dr. Rafael Sierra and Executive Director Americas, Mr. Jose Solis-Padilla about the new representative office in Grand Cayman and what it means for both the Cayman Islands, as well as the Mayo Clinic.

“We are very excited because one of things our institution cares about the most is the needs of the patients, which comes first and knowing that we have patients from the Cayman Islands that go to Mayo Clinic, a resource here that can help guide and facilitate that process is a commitment of the institution,:” noted Mr. Solis-Padilla.

“We recognise that we are serving patients but part of the role of this office will also be to connect with the medical community. The medical community is quite important in this endeavour and we need to be connected to share knowledge and learn from each other,” he added.

Dr. Rafael Sierra explained that the representative office would be just that and not a place that offered treatment here in Grand Cayman.

“It’s important to point out that we are not here to provide medical care. We are here to serve as a connection between the patients that are already interested in traveling to the United States.”

In terms of why Mayo Clinic has chosen to expand its outreach to the Cayman Islands at this time, both men noted that Mayo Clinic has a tradition of serving patients globally.

“Cayman is the third one in the Caribbean and there is no specific reason other than we want to serve patients. We see chronic disease rising globally and the Cayman Islands is becoming more and more sophisticated in treating cancer, complex orthopedics and many other conditions. There is always going to be a few patients that need care overseas, because a procedure that is not done here or maybe the technology is not here yet and we are seeing that increase in appointment requests globally. We believe that having an office here will help us to facilitate that,” said Mr. Solis Padeilla. 

The representative office will be staffed with one person who is connected to Mayo Clinic’s systems and processes and is a part of the May Clinic’s workflow. We have a process for intake and we can upload medical records from here and those will be reviewed by a team at Mayo and so we do not need to have a lot of staff here.

The Cayman Islands office staff may be reached at caymanislandsoff@mayo.edu  and 1-345-324-9857. The office is located at Regatta Office Park Windward 3, Suite 119, Seven Mile Beach.