The test of a good idea is how long it lasts. It has been more than 10 years since a small group of East Bay healthcare pioneers created a network that allows physicians to focus on building strong relationships with their patients.

Sutter East Bay Medical Foundation and Sutter East Bay Medical Group recently celebrated the anniversary of a 10-year partnership. On Oct. 1, 2005, with approximately 100 employees, 49 physicians and four allied health professionals on board, Sutter East Bay Medical Foundation started providing hospitalist services for Alta Bates Summit Medical Center and opened its doors at three care centers in Berkeley.

“I’m so proud of what SEBMF and SEBMG has been able to accomplish together over the last 10 years,” says Samuel Santoro, D.O., President and CEO, SEBMG. “We pride ourselves on delivering patient-centered care and I want to thank all of our employees and physicians for their commitment to providing the best possible care for our patients. Each and every one of you has played a pivotal role in our success.”

SEBMF started out with 10 medical specialties. Today, SEBMF includes more than 29 medical specialties, three urgent care centers, four hospitalists programs, plus laboratory, X-ray and other diagnostic services.

How the Journey Began

In the early 2000s, Sutter Health and Alta Bates Summit Medical Center needed a strategy to recruit and retain top-notch physicians and allied health providers in the face of multiple challenges:

• An aging medical staff
• A shortage of new physicians
• Physicians leaving private practice to work for Kaiser and other medical foundations
• The high cost of practicing primary care medicine in the Bay Area.

To develop an integrated healthcare system and support physicians financially, the steering committee of medical center and physician leadership decided to create a medical foundation—Sutter East Bay Medical Foundation—for providers in Alameda and Contra Costa counties. That required forming a medical group—Sutter East Bay Medical Group—with at least 40 physicians comprised of a minimum of 10 board-certified specialties.

Three Lead the Effort

Led by William DeWolf, M.D., Katarina Lanner- Cusin, M.D., and Louis Wu, M.D., who represented three established primary care and obstetrics and gynecologic medical groups, recruitment efforts began in 2004. They sought out providers who wanted to join:

• A multi-specialty medical group that provided patient-centered care
• A more integrated network of physician offices and hospitals
• A single electronic health record (one patient, one record)

Soon, many of their partners were on board, and by December 2004, hospitalists from Alta Bates and Summit campuses expressed interest in joining and recruiting physicians to build SEBMG.

“We wanted to have a multi specialty group that was integrated on one electronic health record, providing comprehensive care to our patients,” says Wu, the medical group’s chief medical officer, who at that time had cared for some of his patients for almost 30 years. “Our medical foundation also provided an opportunity to nurture and support talented physicians who were just starting out, as well as in-community physicians looking to practice in a larger multispecialty group.”

SEBMF Milestones

In 2008, the medical foundation implemented Sutter's electronic health record and today more than 85,000 SEBMF patients have enrolled in Sutter’s My Health Online, a patient portal providing online and mobile access to their medical records.

By 2010, SEBMF had expanded its geographic footprint to include care centers in Antioch, Brentwood and Castro Valley.

In 2011, SEBMF opened its first urgent care facility, in Antioch, which had great success and paved the way for Castro Valley Urgent Care in 2014 and Milvia Urgent Care in Berkeley in 2015. All three centers are growing and together they care for more than 1,000 patients each month.

Today SEBMF has 400 employees, 275 clinicians and 12 care centers in eight East Bay communities. We have nine laboratory locations and five radiology and imaging centers and support hospitalist programs at Alta Bates Summit, Eden and Sutter Delta medical centers. SEBMF treated approximately 19,000 new patients in 2015, a 50 percent increase since 2011.