Mayo CFO: Embracing change in healthcare
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Jim Wilson, BSBA’91, was recently appointed to oversee the operational budgets of 16 hospitals within the prestigious Mayo Clinic Health System after spending more than three decades as a healthcare financial strategist. Yet he still feels like a novice. And he loves that feeling.
In healthcare, Wilson says, it is not uncommon. Every day, there’s the potential to pursue a new, innovative solution to improve people’s lives. Just when you get comfortable, everything changes.
“In a way, I understand how that could be frustrating for some, but I get to work with incredibly smart people who are inspired to change the world, to examine what we did yesterday and make it better,” Wilson says. “You don’t know exactly what tomorrow’s going to bring, but you have a vision and passion for what it could bring.”
This has always been Wilson’s motivator.
Wilson is the chief financial officer of the Mayo Clinic Health System, the Mayo Clinic community healthcare division that operates 16 hospitals and 44 clinics in Minnesota and Wisconsin. He stepped into this role in 2022. He was the system vice president for finance at the Rush University System for Health in Chicago. He’s worked as an executive at investor-owned and academic/nonprofit hospital systems in Tennessee, Illinois and Florida.
You don’t know exactly what tomorrow’s going to bring, but you have a vision and passion for what it could bring.
— Jim Wilson, BSBA’91
At each stop, he’s embraced challenges with a similar approach — find a way to help someone, even if you have to navigate through a bit of uncertainty temporarily.
Wilson’s parents engrained this altruistic principle during his upbringing. His time at Creighton helped reinforce it.
Wilson, as an undergraduate, ultimately decided to shift away from his premedicine track and explore offerings in the Heider College of Business. But he was the kid who worked part time as a paramedic throughout his undergraduate time at Creighton. He knew he was destined for a career path tied to healthcare, no matter the major he chose.
He took a required business ethics course at Creighton that he remembers repeatedly reinforced this notion: What you do is not as important as how you do it.
Wilson shares that thought with students in the executive MBA programs he instructs and with administrative fellows he mentors at Mayo. It’s a guiding principle in his own work too.
“I take care of people who take care of patients,” he says. “I don’t think of my job to be someone who’s only assessing numbers, profit potential and other financial factors. It’s a balancing act where we all work collaboratively, managing our resources, to find the right answers and deliver results that benefit people.”
