FMC Rochester is a federal medical center in Rochester, Minnesota, specializing in care for male inmates who need long-term or specialized medical and mental health treatment beyond what a standard prison can provide. It opened in 1984 on the site of the former Rochester State Hospital, a state psychiatric institution the Minnesota legislature had voted to close a few years earlier, in 1981, making the shift from a state mental health campus to a federal medical prison a fairly direct one. The facility's formal dedication came later, in September 1985, about eleven months after the first prisoners had already arrived. It's one of only a handful of medical referral centers within the entire Bureau of Prisons system, meaning inmates from other institutions around the country can be transferred there specifically for care they can't get elsewhere. Being located in Rochester also puts it near the Mayo Clinic, one of the country's premier medical systems, which likely factored into the site's usefulness for a facility built around inmate healthcare. For families, it helps to know that a transfer to FMC Rochester usually reflects a serious medical or mental health need rather than a disciplinary or routine housing move.