Sutter Health plots multi-year expansion plan as Sacramento region grows. What will it add?
Sutter Health is in a growth cycle, plotting expansions into hundreds of thousands of square feet of new spaces and recruiting doctors to fill them.
Officials this week said population growth in the greater Sacramento region and a post-pandemic increase in illness are pushing the hospital system to build.
Health system leaders plan to add a 42-bed unit to its midtown campus and build out sites in Roseville and Folsom. They will add dozens of standalone urgent care sites over the next few years, and have recruited around 670 doctors and advanced practice clinicians this year alone, said Rachael McKinney, president of Sutter Health's greater Sacramento division.
"There are significant access challenges to health care, pretty much everywhere in the country," McKinney said. "But definitely here in Sacramento, where we've seen significant population growth post-pandemic."
The health system aims to serve 1 million patients annually by 2030, up from 899,000 last year.
It's a sharp reversal from just a few years ago, when hospitals nationwide saw patient numbers plummet as doctors postponed elective surgeries and people avoided medical facilities for fear of catching COVID-19. But patients have steadily returned.
At least at Sutter, the numbers have now climbed beyond even pre-pandemic levels. Many facilities are seeing record volumes, McKinney said, and fielding more and more transfer requests from other hospitals. Sutter Medical Center Sacramento is caring for about 36 more patients per day compared to 2023, said hospital CEO Hollie Seeley.
Sutter plans to add 12 intensive care unit beds and 30 general beds to a floor of the Anderson Lucchetti Women's and Children's Center that was set aside for growth when the campus absorbed Sutter Memorial Hospital in 2015. By the end of next year, officials hope to accept the first patient to a new 70,000-square-foot multi-specialty center in the Point West neighborhood. They plan to break ground later this year on a 100,000-square-foot site in Folsom. And they plan to build out primary care sites in Roseville and Folsom, which McKinney described as a "high-growth" area.
"I think all of the health systems have some type of construction expansion going on in Folsom," McKinney said.
McKinney said the demand on the system has also grown because patients, on average, seem to arrive with more severe health problems than in the past — perhaps a consequence of delays in medical care during the pandemic.
The health system plans to open 27 urgent cares across Northern California in the next few years. McKinney said she hopes those sites, and new primary care sites, will help doctors reach patients sooner, before health problems escalate.
"The growth strategy really is about serving more patients," McKinney said. "We need more space to be able to do that."
This story was originally published September 19, 2024, 5:00 AM.
