Ken Burns

NEW YORK — After spearheading an epic, 18-hour documentary on the Vietnam War, acclaimed filmmaker Ken Burns has turned to more personal subject matter — one that knows him very intimately, too.

Burns tackles the famed Mayo Clinic in his next film, exploring the history of the innovative Rochester, Minn.-based hospital that has been dubbed “The Miracle in a Cornfield.” It has treated luminaries such as the Dalai Lama — and Burns.

The first time Burns went, he was immediately impressed by the level and detail of his medical care, like the patient was at the center, not the doctor. “I began to get curious about why this was so different from any other health care experience I’d had,” he said. The result is the two-hour documentary “The Mayo Clinic: Faith, Hope, Science,” which starts with the hospital’s birth during a tornado in 1883 and ends with the modern-day Mayo, state-of-the-art facilities over several campuses that treat up to 14,000 patients in 24 hours.

The documentary — directed by Burns, Erik Ewers and Christopher Loren Ewers — features the voices of Tom Hanks, Sam Waterston and Blythe Danner, as well as familiar touches: Peter Coyote narrates, there’s rousing music by Aaron Copeland and Scott Joplin, and evocative slow-scans of old photographs known as “the Ken Burns effect.”

The film is part of a documentary film empire Burns has on tap. Upcoming are works on the history of country music, Ernest Hemingway, Muhammad Ali, Benjamin Franklin and the American Revolution, as well as deep dives into crime and punishment in America and civil rights during Lyndon Johnson’s presidency.

Burns has built a reputation for capturing sweeping historic moments with intimate details of peoples’ lives, tackling topics ranging from the Brooklyn Bridge to baseball, from Mark Twain to jazz.

His films make the past come alive: Burns was once escorted out of an Alabama church by state troopers from people still upset by the Civil War’s outcome.

“The Mayo Clinic” airs on PBS at 9 p.m. Tuesday.