In what the company calls one of its largest-ever enterprise strategic partnerships, GE HealthCare has announced a seven-year deal with California-based Sutter Health.
The partnership is grounded in expanding access to care, improved patient experience, more consistency regardless of care location, increased patient capacity, greater system integration and interoperability, and a 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.
The first focus area of what GE HealthCare and Sutter are referring to as their Care Alliance is an accelerated technology program across the Sutter Health system that will bring 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 technology refresh covers the breadth of GE HealthCare’s portfolio of solutions.
The long-term collaboration will increase access to 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, according to 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,” said Warner Thomas, president and CEO of Sutter Health, in a statement. “This collaboration ensures that no matter where patients enter the Sutter Health system, they’ll receive seamless and coordinated care.”
The strategic partnership also supports Sutter Health’s larger access strategy, which includes opening dozens of new care sites across Northern California in the next few years. The health system currently serves nearly 3.5 million patients, and has 57,000 employees and clinicians, and more than 12,000 affiliated physicians.
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.
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.