North Bay Business Journal

“We are seeing quite a shift in the lifestyles of people who in live in the areas we serve,” Sutter spokesman Bill Gleeson said.

“It is not uncommon to recreate in one city, work in another and get health care in a third. We are a mobile society, so we need to broaden the way we define a community, and we needed a governance structure that is better suited for the future.”

Currently, each of the organization’s 24 Northern California locations are overseen by individual boards of local Sutter and community leaders that manage the facility’s budget, labor contracts, local needs and more. But beginning sometime next year, five regional boards will replace the local councils and assume control over all sites within a geographic area, including allocation of finances.

With the transition, Sutter’s Sonoma and Marin County sites will be lumped with others in San Francisco and Lakeport, though Sutter Medical Center of Santa Rosa may be carved out because of stipulations written in a contract with the county.

“Those boards really were the remnants of these various institutions at a time when they had been independent, stand-alone organizations. … We decided if we wanted to continue to provide high-quality health care at a reasonable price we must align the decision-making process so that it better reflects the way patients are using these facilities,” said Mike Roosevelt, a former Sutter Health board chairman, Sutter hospital trustee and chair of a governance-assessment steering committee that came up with the regional board plan.

The steering committee hosted a series of meetings for a little more than a year before beginning implementation of the regional governing board plan, which started last month with board member nominations from local jurisdictions. Mr. Roosevelt said the group decided on the consolidated governance structure after analyzing other successful health systems in the U.S. and by looking at patient usage patterns. Additionally, the group completed about 100 interviews with community members in each location.

“One of the things the committee did was go to geographic regions and generate analysis of where people in the region are going for health care,” he said.

“If you look at a graph it looks like a spider web. They are going all over. … When you have a sophisticated service like cardiac care, the data shows you get better results with larger programs. But when you have each location wanting to include cardiac care, what you end up with is a bunch of small programs rather than one large one.”

He said it is possible North Bay dollars could be reallocated to other facilities in the region but only if that is where patients are most served.

“It benefits everyone in the community to have a more regional approach,” he said.

After the regional boards are selected, the group will vote on bylaws for each jurisdiction. Members serve in three-year terms for a maximum of three elections. Mr. Gleeson said the organization is also working to create regional management teams that would oversee the day-to-day operations of the facilities, though they would not replace the local chief executive.

Even with the new combined governing boards and management teams, certain decisions will continue to be made locally, including community benefit programs and quality assurance.

In Santa Rosa, the medical center is bound by a Health Care Access Agreement with the county that mandates that a certain number of board members be residents of Sonoma. An official with the county said the Board of Supervisors will consider allowing the Santa Rosa campus to participate in the regional board when it discusses Sutter’s new hospital proposal during the next few months.