The motivation for Sansum Clinic to partner with Sutter Health is to create a “more substantial financial footing,” and to help recruit more physicians to the area, according to Dr. Kurt Ransohoff, CEO and chief medical officer.

Sansum Clinic, which operates a network of primary and specialty clinics in Santa Barbara County, on Friday announced plans for a “strategic partnership” with Sutter Health, which operates hospitals and medical clinics in Northern California, and wants to expand its outpatient services.

Sutter Health would essentially become the parent of Sansum Clinic, since both organizations are not-for-profit organizations, Ransohoff said.

“They would assume our assets and liabilities, basically is how that would happen,” he told Noozhawk on Monday.  

“We really do feel this to be a good thing for our patients, a good thing for Sansum Clinic, and a good thing for the community,” he said.

Assuming an agreement is formalized, it would take several months to get the necessary approvals from regulators, Ransohoff said.

“Sutter really does not have a significant presence anywhere near here, so we would think that would not cause some of the concerns that had been created when we were trying to affiliate with Cottage Health,” he said.

That potential merger of two large Santa Barbara County medical providers was called off in 2017.

“In terms of patient care, we’re doing this because we think it will be better,” Ransohoff said. “We think this will help our ability to recruit doctors.”

The community has a shortage of doctors, especially primary care physicians, as anyone trying to make an appointment in town knows, he said.

“Having more substantial financial footing should be able to help with some of those challenges,” he said.

Sutter Health has a residency program, and could send residents to Santa Barbara County on rotation, which could help Sansum Clinic attract new physicians to the area, he added.

The partnership would give Sansum Clinic more access to capital than it has on its own, according to Ransohoff, and could bring purchasing discounts and operational efficiencies.

He said the idea to partner with Sutter Health first came up about 15 years ago, but then the recession hit and “that just took the wind out of everybody’s sails about doing any kind of expansion.”

The pandemic “hurt us pretty substantially financially,” Ransohoff said, and the organization decided to look for a partner again.

“It’s kind of ironic after this long and winding road we ended up with the people who we thought would be a great partner 15 years ago,” he said.  

Sansum Clinic would, for at least a while, continue to have its own management team, its own tax ID number and its own relationships with vendors and insurance companies, Ransohoff said.

“We haven’t talked about any kind of shakeup in the management team,” he told Noozhawk.

Sutter Health operates healthcare facilities in the Bay Area, Central Valley, Sacramento Valley, Marin County, and the Sierra Nevada foothills of Northern California.

The organization released a brief statement Friday, mostly consisting of Sansum Clinic’s letter to the community announcing the partnership.

Sutter Health also said: “The partnership, which involves Sansum Clinic becoming part of Sutter Health over time, plans to create more access to primary care and ambulatory multi-specialty care currently in high demand in the region.

“At a time when health systems across the country face increasing industry pressures, these two like-minded California not-for-profit health systems have recognized an opportunity to collaborate to best serve the needs of patients and communities for generations to come.”