Mayo Clinic plans med school in Scottsdale

Mayo Clinic will join forces with Arizona State University to develop a new $266 million medical-school branch in Scottsdale that could begin teaching medical students by 2014. Mayo Clinic's plan to raise and spend millions of dollars is the latest example of Arizona's health-care providers pursuing lucrative investments in new buildings, technology, education and research despite the poor economy and uncertainty related to the nation's new health-care law. The $109 million Banner MD Anderson Cancer Center opened this week in Gilbert. Mayo Clinic also plans to build a $187 million cutting-edge, proton-beam center for treating cancer at its northeast Phoenix hospital. The University of Arizona College of Medicine-Phoenix is poised to expand with a nearly $200 million health-sciences-education building under construction in downtown Phoenix. That will be followed with a $136 million expansion of the Arizona Cancer Center in downtown Phoenix.