In 2017, Boone Health capitalized on an opening to extend its reach and capture new patients in need of quality diagnostic care when the independent pathology lab that had served the area for 30 years was purchased by a national lab.

“We knew at that point that we had an opportunity to serve our patients locally,” Wilkinson says. “We tapped into every Mayo resource we had at that time to get our strategic plan going forward. And we’ve not let up on that since.”

The relationship between Boone Health and Mayo Clinic Laboratories extends back to the late 1990s, when Boone began sending reference testing to Mayo Clinic. In addition to providing rare tests, Mayo Clinic offered education and support for improving laboratory operations to better serve patients.

“We really tapped into their resources to say, ‘How can we do this better?’” Wilkinson says. “It was truly just taking the resources available on the website and some email correspondence to get us going, but we took that and ran with it.”

As part of Boone’s strategic growth plan, it expanded its primary care and specialty care networks. From 2017 to 2022, six new clinics and even more laboratory draw sites opened their doors.

“We went from having just one main hospital draw site to opening up nine additional outpatient draw sites around those primary care centers because we wanted to attract the patients that were coming for those,” Wilkinson says. “We ran faster than we thought we knew how to run, but we knew we had to do that for patients in our area.”

At present, more than 500 patients each day receive services at Boone’s outpatient draw sites. “We know that we are truly impacting mid-Missourians with the high-quality healthcare we provide. We see it year after year and it doesn't look to be letting up,” Wilkinson says.

The increase in patient and laboratory volumes made an impact on Boone leadership. Having seen the initial growth, they looked to their lab to understand how they could continue expanding.

“One thing that we really piggybacked off of with (Mayo) was helping to explore our outreach opportunities,” Wilkinson says. “Several years ago, I think the (laboratory) was looked at as a cost center versus a revenue center. When I came into this role and we started growing the outpatient work, that’s where we really started communicating with our senior executive team to show the value in outpatient lab services.”

With Mayo’s guidance, Boone discerned which tests made financial sense to keep in house and expanded their testing repertoire.

Wilkinson says on-site visits from Mayo Clinic outreach specialists were instrumental in demonstrating the value of the laboratory to Boone leadership. “Our lab is at the forefront of their minds and continues to be a huge growth strategy for our health system as we look at the years to come.”

As Boone Health has grown, the laboratory has evaluated its ability to take on reference testing and has begun partnering with smaller hospitals within its 26-county service area, Wilkinson says.

“We’ve actually become their reference lab. The testing we don’t do, we send on to Mayo Clinic. Where we see the next phase going is to these larger clients, other rural hospitals that want to partner with us because of the Mayo name and connection.”

Wilkinson adds that his team routinely passes along the information and education provided by Mayo Clinic to their clients, equipping those organizations with testing and laboratory-related resources.

“Truly having this two-way partnership where (Mayo) is encouraging us to bring testing in house and giving us the resources to do that, I can’t think of another vendor or partner we use at Boone that does that within the laboratory setting. We don’t feel like they are competing against us, and they truly want to see us do better, grow, and become more efficient. It’s very unique and we’re taking full advantage of it.”