Marshfield Clinic

Marshfield Clinic is a health care system in northern, central and western Wisconsin, with 2 hospitals and 52 community care centers as of June, 2010. It was founded in 1916 by six local physicians: K.W. Doege, William Hipke, Victor Mason, Walter G. Sexton, H.H. Milbee, and Roy P. Potter, in the community of Marshfield, Wisconsin.

Marshfield Clinic supports a number of centers and foundations:

• Marshfield Clinic Research Foundation is a not-for-profit research organization composed of five research centers: the National Farm Medicine Center, the Marshfield Epidemiologic Research Center, the Center for Human Genetics, the Biomedical Informatics Research Center and the Clinical Research Center.

• The Laird Center for Medical Research, named after former U.S. Secretary of Defense, Melvin Laird, is a medical research and education facility on the campus of Marshfield Clinic. The Lawton Center for Medical Research is a similar facility dedicated to Dr. Ben Lawton, a prominent thoracic surgeon at Marshfield Clinic during the 20th century and a president of the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents.

• Marshfield Clinic Education Foundation, Marshfield Clinic's education division, provides residency programs for medical school graduates in the disciplines of internal medicine, pediatrics, medicine and pediatrics, dermatology, surgery and transitional year. All programs are accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) of the American Medical Association. About 125 members of the Marshfield Clinic staff hold clinical teaching appointments from the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.

• Marshfield Clinic Laboratories is a system of laboratories that employs more than 450 people and performs more than 20 million tests annually. In addition to human medicine, it has established separate service lines for forensic toxicology, food safety and veterinary diagnostics. In 2003, Marshfield Clinic Laboratories diagnosed the first case of human monkeypox in the Western Hemisphere.

• Marshfield Clinic's health maintenance organization (HMO), Security Health Plan of Wisconsin, Inc., was established in 1986 as an outgrowth of the Greater Marshfield Community Health Plan, which began in 1971 as one of the earliest HMOs in the country.

Marshfield Clinic’s electronic health records system was featured in a New York Times article. The article detailed the advantages of electronic medical records, noting Marshfield Clinic’s commitment to technology as a means to improve patient care and lower costs.