The name “Mayfield” on his white coat had more meaning for patients than Juan Meija, M.D., expected when he first started working as a neurosurgeon at Mayfield Brain & Spine. “It imparted in them a degree of trust which I didn’t earn immediately,” he says. “As they say, it was on the backs of giants,” such as neuro-surgeon Frank Mayfield, who founded the practice in 1937.
Just a decade before its centennial, Mayfield is celebrating unprecedented expansion across the region and deeper dives into innovative treatment breakthroughs. The company is bringing in three new neurosurgeons and its first-ever neuro-oncologist this year and increasing its total physician count by 15 percent. It treated 36,601 patients in 2025, an all-time high.
Mayfield leaders credit the growth to their 100-percent surgeon-owned model. Board Chair Vince DiNapoli, M.D., and CEO Mark Vorherr say the ownership style breeds innovation and healthy competitiveness between surgeons to stay innovative and relevant, compared to other mod-els where a non-medical board runs a practice. “There’s something to be said for physicians who report to themselves and the accountability that brings,” says Vorherr.
The practice is divided into three “centers for excellence:” spine care, brain tumor care, and vascular systems of the brain. Each is led by a surgeon. “So not only is the company owned and led by surgeons, so are the individual service lines,” he says. “When specific cases are reviewed, they discuss them openly from a perspective of educating one another and constantly learning with one another.”
Mayfield expanded its reach to the Dayton area in 2024, opening an office in Springboro. The practice purchased just under five acres of land there, putting a prominent building on I-75 in Warren County, Vorherr says, to ensure patients who needed them would be able to spot their presence in the area. “We’ve hired Dayton area people, so we want to be visible there, and I think that separates us from others that have done expansions into those markets,” he says, adding that Premiere Health in Dayton is Mayfield’s fifth area hospital system partnership in addition to TriHealth, St. Elizabeth, Christ, and Bon Secours Mercy.
Mayfield’s nearly 100-year legacy has started impacting multiple generations as well as single patients over the course of a lifetime. Mejia says he recently operated on a woman in her 90s who’d had her first operation in her 20s with one of the practice’s original founders. “It’s pretty cool to meet a patient in the ER and have them and their family completely trust you be-cause a family member or loved one had surgery at Mayfield,” says Mejia, a Cincinnati native and St. X graduate. “A lot of our patients bring up those connections when we see them be-cause we’ve been in the community for so long.”
