Sacramento, Calif.-based Sutter Health is launching five new Graduate Medical Education programs this year as part of a broader initiative to quadruple its GME footprint, according to Lindsay Mazotti, MD.
In 2024, when Dr. Mazotti joined Sutter Health as chief medical officer of medical education and science, the system had about a dozen residency and fellowship programs. To prepare for future supply and demand needs, leaders at the 21-hospital system increased its investment in medical education.
“As we started exploring, first the changes ahead in the shrinking physician workforce and the anticipated shortages by the end of this decade, we thought really differently about how we might continue to expand access to care, not just growing more care centers but how to deliberately grow more physicians,” she said on a Becker’s Healthcare podcast. “Medical education has been part of that strategy.”
Sutter plans to operate 52 total residency and fellowship programs by 2035, which will expand the system’s medical education spots to about 1,000 residents and fellows every year. This development requires increased staffing for the care and feeding of residents, as well as new program directors and faculty.
For health systems and hospitals interested in making the same plunge, Dr. Mazotti recommends seeking out grant funding opportunities for the start-up phase and prioritizing scalable programs, such as transitional programs that can be converted into fellowships and subspecialties.
“You have to sort of begin with the end in mind and think deliberately about starting bigger than you might otherwise start in order to maximize opportunities for medical education, especially in a really large academic center,” Dr. Mazotti said.
