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Since its inception in fall 2023, Sutter's Heart Failure Care Pathway has focused on whole-person care by having primary care physicians, advanced practice clinicians, pharmacists, cardiologists and heart failure specialists work together to reduce rehospitalizations and enhance a patient's quality of life.
Whole-person care is a vital part of Sutter Health's Destination 2030 strategic plan, and the pathway emphasizes core recommendations and strategies to improve care for patients living with heart failure, including diagnosis, risk reduction, self-management, advance care planning, medication therapy, referrals to specialists and programs within our network, inpatient care, transitions of care and team-based care management.
Work on the pathway is being led by Michael X., Pham, M.D., M.P.H., FACC, and Zijian Xu, M.D., Ph.D., FACC. Dr. Pham is Medical Director, Advanced Heart Failure Program and Chief of Cardiology at California Pacific Medical Center; Dr. Xu is Medical Director, Advanced Heart Failure Program and Chief of Cardiology at Sutter Medical Center, Sacramento. As Sutter Health's first care pathway, it will serve as a model for consistently managing chronic conditions for large patient populations.
Sutter's California Pacific Medical Center (CPMC) is the first hospital in San Francisco to use robotic-assisted bronchoscopy to perform a new procedure that streamlines lung cancer treatment—accomplishing in hours what previously took weeks. The Assisted Single Anesthetic Procedure (ASAP) allows for multiple medical procedures to be completed back-to-back in one surgical session. Under Dr. Heba Ismail, an interventional pulmonologist who directs CPMC's Lung Cancer Program, this new model represents a major shift in how doctors diagnose and treat suspected early-stage lung cancer. For patients, it can eliminate weeks of worry, repeat specialist visits and separate surgical procedures.
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In October 2023, we announced the launch of a major Innovation Center in San Francisco. Our new physical space in what is regarded as the AI capital will open in early 2024, creating a dynamic hub that pushes the frontier of what's possible in healthcare and combines the power of technology with the best clinical care. It will be a place where our partners, our leaders and our physicians and care teams collaborate to find new ways to help people lead better, healthier lives. It will also serve as a gathering place where we can host innovation events, simulate and evaluate ideas and tools in clinical settings, and train physicians and clinicians how to use them.
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In 2023, we selected Irene Arroyo-Romero, MSN-FNP, as the inaugural candidate for a new Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) Fellowship, a joint effort by the Sutter Health Institute for Advancing Health Equity and the Center for Community Engagement's Ethnic Health Institute at Samuel Merritt University. The DNP Fellowship, the first of its kind in the U.S., aims to help reduce health disparities by developing the next generation of health equity-focused nurses and nursing leaders. Irene and future fellows will be placed at a patient care site within the Sutter Health network, where they will receive mentorship and the opportunity to participate in groundbreaking research that can directly apply to clinical settings in order to reduce health disparities.
Research and innovation through clinical trials are a vital part of how our organization is helping to change and save people's lives, both now and in the future. Clinical trials at Sutter are uncovering the keys to improving treatments and tools for early diagnoses of complex illnesses and the clues to finding cures. Our research team is 625 people strong, and at our first-ever Research Symposium in August, researchers and research staff—alongside physician-scientists at the top of their fields, nationally published researchers and leaders in human-centered design and innovation—shared ways advancements in care are accelerating across our health system.
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In 2023 we collaborated with San Mateo, California-based neurovascular technology developer RapidAI to usher in a novel approach to stroke care across our integrated not-for-profit system. By pairing AI with advanced imaging and mobile applications, we're defining stroke care of the future—one where emergency medicine and stroke specialists have the tools and clinical data they need to help doctors more quickly diagnose strokes and plan the course of treatment.
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Caring for patients is our purpose at Sutter Health. Patients like Malaka Thompson, whose life took an unexpected turn the year she turned 40. Malaka found a lump in her breast, thinking it was a cyst that would go away on its own. Her doctor requested a mammogram, but she was busy with work and family and didn't go for the exam. Then a Sutter scheduler called and encouraged her to come in. She says that motivating call—and her expert and compassionate Sutter care team—helped save her life.
Sutter Health serves one of the most diverse patient populations in the country, so it's essential that we build trust and partnerships across our teams and with the communities we serve in order to best provide every patient with our high-quality, culturally competent care. In 2023 the Human Rights Campaign, an institution that recognizes equity efforts through its annual Healthcare Equality Index, deemed 19 Sutter facilities “LGBTQ+ Healthcare Equality Leaders” for 2022–2023.
Read MoreMemorable highlights from this past year.
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