The multi-year collaboration enables expanded access to quality diagnostic care for patients in California and provides Sutter physicians and clinicians with access to technology advances and innovations.
GE HealthCare and Sutter Health have announced a seven-year strategic enterprise partnership, known as a Care Alliance, that aims to increase access to innovative imaging services and create a more seamless and coordinated experience for clinicians and patients across the Sutter Health system.
The long-term collaboration will increase access to essential diagnostic care across California, providing patients with advanced technology in their own communities that can help enable quicker appointment scheduling, accelerated diagnostic imaging scan results, early diagnoses, greater convenience, and more consistent and timely care. This Care Alliance marks one of GE HealthCare’s largest ever enterprise strategic partnerships.
For Sutter, this alliance will help achieve faster access to novel equipment and technology solutions, as well as provide an innovative service delivery model with enhanced, reliable equipment availability. It is grounded in key goals, including expanded access to care, improved patient experience, more consistency regardless of care location, increased patient capacity, greater system integration and interoperability, and a timely refresh of needed equipment. It centers on several areas of collaboration, including optimized technology, an innovative service delivery model, advancing service line care at destination centers of excellence and digital integration.
“This strategic partnership is rooted in our commitment to providing innovative, high-caliber care to our 3.5 million patients across Northern California and the Central Coast,” said Warner Thomas, president and CEO of Sutter Health. “We’re responding to what we’ve heard from our physicians and making comprehensive upgrades with the latest technology to boost our capacity and expand access points. This collaboration ensures that no matter where patients enter the Sutter Health system, they’ll receive seamless and coordinated care.”
The first key focus area of the Care Alliance is an accelerated technology program across the Sutter Health system that will focus on some of the most advanced AI-powered imaging technology and digital solutions available to patients, including PET/CT, SPECT/CT, MRI, CT, X-ray, nuclear medicine and ultrasound. GE HealthCare’s interventional, mammography, diagnostic cardiology, maternal and infant care and anesthesia solutions will also be included in Sutter Health’s ambulatory care centers, helping to address the growing need for care outside of the traditional hospital setting. This comprehensive technology refresh covers the breadth of GE HealthCare’s portfolio of solutions, providing clinicians with innovative options to meet changing patient needs more efficiently and quickly.
“We are committed to support Sutter Health in its mission and have deep respect for their openness to a collaboration that meets the heart of their needs,” said Catherine Estrampes, U.S. and Canada president & CEO at GE HealthCare. “This Care Alliance is a customized, clinician-focused approach aligned with our shared goals. It was jointly designed with expert assessment of how we provide our latest imaging technology in the right settings to serve patients most efficiently throughout their care journey, closer to home. We look forward to supporting Sutter Health physicians and clinicians in delivering enhanced patients’ outcomes.”
Imaging and ultrasound solutions, enabled by digital and AI advancements, will be implemented across the entire healthcare system over several years, reducing variation and providing the innovation clinicians need to best serve patients. Innovative new solutions include GE HealthCare’s Omni Legend PET/CT, StarGuide SPECT/CT and Vscan Air™ SL ultrasound with Caption AI™ software. Notably, GE HealthCare’s AIR™ Recon DL MR image reconstruction will be deployed and utilizes deep learning algorithms to improve image quality and MRI scan times. By optimizing image reconstruction AIR™ Recon DL reduces artifacts, and enhances image clarity and scan times, enabling clinicians to obtain high-quality diagnostic images while improving patient comfort and workflow efficiency.
The strategic partnership with GE HealthCare will also support Sutter Health’s larger access strategy, which includes opening dozens of new care sites across Northern California in the next few years. Additionally, it will further support the health system’s expansion of advanced service lines and destination centers of excellence including areas such as heart and vascular care, cancer care and neurosciences. This includes access to new technology and digital optimization to expand clinical procedures and services, helping enable precise, high-quality patient care from early screening to diagnosis to treatment to monitoring. For example, Sutter Health plans to build a new cancer center on Sutter’s Memorial Medical Center campus in the California Central Valley and recently announced two new flagship campuses in Silicon Valley with specialty care focuses. Potential future areas of enhanced services across the Sutter Health system could include mental health, orthopedics, women’s health and pediatrics.
Sutter Health will adopt technology at a more rapid pace with an accelerated upgrade schedule, including the latest software releases to prevent obsolescence and keep technologies current over the long-term. The service delivery model will help ensure consistent operations and minimize unexpected disruptions—with patient safety, efficiency and reliability in mind.
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The agreement will also include significant investment in Sutter Health’s workforce development programs to include ongoing training and education for technologists, nurses and physicians through Sutter Health University and other learning opportunities, which includes supporting the next generation of clinicians who are reflective of the communities they serve. GE HealthCare plans to assist Sutter Health in the design of a scalable workforce and talent development program that includes talent pathway community outreach, collaborations with radiologic technologist schools, as well as talent acquisition, development and retention, including leadership and clinical learning journeys. The program will aim at addressing the critical clinician shortage and support healthcare providers’ clinical staffing needs.
