Mayo Clinic opens new blood center

(ABC 6 News) – It’s located on a highway 52 frontage road right across the street from Target north.

Mayo Clinic hopes this facility makes it easier for people to access.

The new blood donation center is looking to serve more of the Rochester community.

Mayo hopes this encourages more people to donate blood.

“Rather than being downtown we’re now outside of the downtown center, there’s plentiful parking, it’s easier for patients to get to,” Dr. Bobbit Pritt said.

The new site has five donor chairs, and they plan to expand to collect platelets in the future.

According to Mayo Clinic’s blood donor program blog, they are in urgent need of AB positive and O negative blood.

“We are dependent on our community to support our practice in terms of the blood donations, we have unbelievably loyal volunteers across the southeast corner of Minnesota,” Georg von Bormann said.

Some of those loyal volunteers were in attendance at the ribbon cutting.

“I started when I was 16 years old in high school,” Mark Korinek said.

“It was my dad that introduced me to blood donation with the Red Cross,” Dave Johnson said.

Korinek and Johnson are not strangers when it comes to donating blood.

Korinek has donated 457 times and Johnson has donated 456 times.

They want to spread the message to encourage people to try blood donation.

“I always encourage people, do it again or just try it once and see, and typically it starts their journey which is really kind of cool because we started ours as well the same way,” Korinek said.

Another reason why they donate so much is because they know it’s going towards a good cause.

“When you’re giving, it could be used for your brother, your mom, you just never know.”

This center will be open Monday through Friday 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Mayo would like it if you made an appointment to give but, they will take walk-ins here or at their downtown location.

For more information on donating blood click HERE.