Sutter Health’s continued growth as a comprehensive, integrated health system in Northern California took another step Nov. 17 with the announcement of plans to build a new medical center on a 13.63-acre site near Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara.
The Santa Clara project builds on the health system’s ongoing efforts to meet growing patient demand and expand access. Currently, Sacramento-based Sutter’s team of more than 60,000 employees and clinicians, along with more than 14,000 affiliated physicians, provides care to over 3.5 million patients.
“We feel great about where Sutter Health is,” President and CEO Warner Thomas told Becker’s. “We’ve made great progress over the past three years — expanding our physician network, growing our ambulatory clinic base and building our digital platform. We’ve hired over 2,500 physicians and clinicians across the system.
“It’s a good time to be at Sutter Health. There are a lot of great things happening across the system. This project is a progression of that — we’re looking at where we can complete our system of care. And this has been a gap for Sutter for a long time. We have the Palo Alto Foundation Medical Group, which is our partner in Silicon Valley, with over 2,000 physicians and clinicians, but we’ve never had a hospital in the South Silicon Valley area.
“This allows us to build that facility, along with large ambulatory buildings on the same campus. We also have the Santa Clara East Campus nearby — a five to seven minute car ride away. We’re really building a destination center for healthcare in Santa Clara, anchored by this medical center.”
The new eight-story flagship facility will build on the significant physician presence in Silicon Valley through the PAFMG, according to a health system news release shared with Becker’s.
Sutter said it will build the approximately 850,000-square-foot Sutter Medical Center, Santa Clara at 2831 and 2841 Mission College Blvd., replacing the existing office park.
According to the system, features will include:
- 272 licensed beds in private patient rooms, with space for 30 additional beds to meet future demand
- Private patient rooms
- A full-service emergency department
- Intensive care units
- Labor and delivery suites and a level 3 neonatal intensive care unit
- Advanced operating rooms and surgical services
- Environmentally responsible building design
- A rooftop helipad for emergency transport
- Access for community and community physicians
- Virtual monitoring
- Personalized patient controls
- Best practices around use of space
The new medical center is part of Sutter’s broader growth plan in Silicon Valley. In 2024, Sutter, in collaboration with PAFMG and The Sobrato Organization, announced plans to develop about 1 million square feet of ambulatory space across two Santa Clara campuses less than a mile apart.
In October, the new Sutter East Santa Clara Care Center outpatient facility became the first building to open on the new Sutter East Santa Clara Campus. The Santa Clara West campus, which will offer an outpatient surgery center and specialty physician clinics, is slated to open in 2027.
Sutter Medical Center, Santa Clara, combined with the East and West campuses, represents the largest investment in the health system’s history — totaling $2.8 billion, according to the health system.
“It’s been a big priority to align our system and complete our system of care,” said Mr. Thomas. “We came across a piece of property that’s ideal. It already has office buildings on it — we’re taking two down and renovating two for ambulatory care. So it becomes a medical campus with both the medical center and outpatient care on one property.
“That was really attractive. And again, this is a project we’ve wanted to do for a long time. Now we have the right place and a great partner in the medical group, so we’re excited to [move forward].”
Mr. Thomas also said Sutter views the project as a strategic use of capital.
“We always think about our investment in capital through the lens of ‘patients first,'” he said. “This is a ‘patients first’ investment — one that allows us to create a coordinated, organized model for them.
“We know it’s a challenging time in healthcare, but we believe in investing for the future. This is not a short-term project, so we feel good about allocating capital in this area.”
Sutter projects Sutter Medical Center, Santa Clara will open in late 2031. According to an independent economic impact analysis completed by EY and cited by Sutter, the health system’s new care facilities in the Greater Silicon Valley region are projected to support more than 5,000 jobs once fully open by 2031.
