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WHAT IS SUTTER? |
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QUALITY CONCERNS |
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EMAIL UPDATES |
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SEND A COMMENT |
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Docs Concerned About Sutter is sponsored by Sutter Health Watch, a coalition of physicians, health care advocates, patients and family members, the Service Employees International Union, and community supporters who share concerns about and have united to improve the safety and quality of care in California hospitals. Docs Concerned About Sutter is totally independent of Sutter Health. |
Why should medical students care about Sutter Health?
Sutter Health is the largest hospital system in Northern California and one of the most profitable systems in the entire nation. Here are three reasons why medical students should care about what goes on in Sutter hospitals:
1) Sutter aggressively recruits physicians to work within its medical system. As future doctors, it is worthwhile for medical students to know how Sutter treats the doctors it works with now. Unfortunately, in many of its markets, the way Sutter Health is seeking to reorganize physicians is generating growing dissatisfaction. See “Doctors and Sutter Health.”
2) Sutter’s model of managing patient care will have an effect on the way medicine is practiced throughout Northern California for the foreseeable future because Sutter is the largest hospital system in the region. Unfortunately, Sutter's focus on profits appears to be having serious effects on the quality of care it delivers to patients. While the company made nearly $1 billion in profits during the past two years, several Sutter hospitals have been the subject of recent regulatory scrutiny regarding quality of care. See “Quality Concerns”.
3) Whereas the goal of many medical students is to provide health care for all, Sutter’s behavior is at odds with its social responsibility as a not-for-profit hospital to provide access to care for all. Federal and local lawmakers are raising serious questions about whether Sutter’s pricing practices, billing and collection practices, and levels of charity care provision, meet the requirements of its tax-exempt status. See “What is Sutter Health”.
For more information on Sutter Health, see:
What is Sutter Health?
Doctors & Sutter Health
Quality Concerns
Pricing Practices
Docs Concerned About Sutter Home
Take action! Medical students can:
- Forward information about Sutter’s practices to friends
- Get involved! Contact Maria for more information. Options include:
- Help coordinate a campus event for other medical students
- Conduct educational tabling
- Help research the effect of Sutter Health’s policies on physicians and patients
- And many more!
Upcoming Campus Events about Sutter
Contact us to find out when we’ll be speaking on your campus or if you would like to help organize an event.