Quality Care

Sutter Health named among top 15 U.S. health systems

Sutter Health and Sutter’s Valley Area were named among the top-performing health systems in the country by Truven Health Analytics™ for achieving superior performance on five measures of care quality, patient satisfaction, cost per episode of illness and operational efficiency. For its 15 Top Health Systems® study, Truven gathered data from 338 health systems and nearly 3,000 hospitals, identifying 15 large, medium and small health systems that achieved these benchmarks. Sutter Health and our Valley Area were named as two of the nation’s top five performers among large health care systems. Both the Sutter Health Valley Area—whose service region is larger than many of the country’s health systems—and the entire Sutter Health system received top five recognition. Data show hospitals in Sutter Health and the other top performing systems:

• Save more lives and have fewer patient complications
• Spend five percent less per patient episode of care
• Shorten patients’ length of stay in the hospital
• Make fewer patient safety errors
• Score 7 percent better on patient satisfaction

Six-patient kidney transplant chain makes history

It began with the generosity of one altruistic organ donor and concluded with six patients being given the gift of life. Twelve patients at Sutter Health’s California Pacific Medical Center (CPMC) made history in 2015 through a groundbreaking six-way kidney donation transplant—the largest conducted in the CPMC Transplant Center’s 44-year existence— all thanks to Zully Broussard, an organ donor who simply wanted to help and did not have a specific recipient in mind. The rare transplant “chain” was made possible by kidney matching software that enables multiple incompatible pairs of donors and recipients to find matches. CPMC conducts 200-plus kidney transplants per year, making it one of the largest kidney transplant centers in the western United States. In 2014, the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients honored CPMC as the nation’s only hospital with both kidney and liver transplant programs that have higher-than-expected adult patient survival rates; 98.4 percent of kidney patients who received their care from CPMC survived one year after transplant, compared to the expected 96.6 percent.

Sepsis training, protocols save lives

Her patient was ready to go home when he suddenly spiked a fever, recalls Nancy Dupree, R.N., a perioperative nurse at Sutter-affiliated Eden Medical Center in Castro Valley. Thanks to her recent training on the deadly blood infection sepsis, Nancy knew this was a potential warning sign. She screened the patient (who tested positive) and immediately provided lifesaving medication. Sutter Health’s standardized program to rapidly identify and treat sepsis—the No. 1 killer of hospitalized patients in the U.S.—has reduced mortality from sepsis and septic shock by 33 percent across our affiliates since 2014.

iPads connect hospice patients, clinicians after hours

It’s the middle of the night, and a hospice patient suddenly develops a symptom such as breathing problems that are alarming to the family or caregivers. Thanks to a new Hospice Video Project funded through Sutter Care at Home’s (SCAH) Giving Program, hospice patients can connect to hospice clinicians by iPad video or chat after hours. More than 50 patients and their families at Sutter Health’s Emeryville and San Mateo hospice locations were issued iPads during the 2015 pilot program, providing peace of mind to patients, families and caregivers during a time of stress and anxiety while enhancing the clinician’s ability to provide quality care to the patient.

Awards and Recognition

Sutter Health is honored to have been recognized throughout 2015 for the quality care we provide to our communities and patients throughout Northern California.