GE HealthCare signs $1B imaging AI deal with 1 of nation’s largest nonprofits
GE HealthCare has signed a seven-year imaging AI deal with one of the nation’s largest nonprofit hospital systems, the two announced Tuesday.
The collaboration is with Sacramento-based Sutter Health, which operates 24 acute care hospitals across California. In the coming years, its providers will implement artificial intelligence-enabled imaging and ultrasound solutions from GE across the enterprise, spanning over 300 facilities. This will help reduce variation and give Sutter Health’s 29,000-plus clinicians access to the newest imaging advancements.
“We’re responding to what we’ve heard from our physicians and making comprehensive upgrades with the latest technology to boost our capacity and expand access points,” Sutter Health President and CEO Warner Thomas, MBA, said in a statement. “This collaboration ensures that no matter where patients enter the Sutter Health system, they’ll receive seamless and coordinated care.”
This new “Care Alliance” marks one of GE HealthCare’s largest-ever enterprise strategic partnerships. Signing the deal will give Sutter Health faster access to new equipment and technology from the Chicago-based imaging manufacturer. They’ll together focus on shared goals of expanding capacity and entry points, improving the patient experience, standardizing care across locations, bolstering interoperability and refreshing equipment. GE and the hospital system will initially focus on new advanced imaging technologies such as PET/CT, SPECT/CT, MRI, CT, X-ray and ultrasound. Sutter Health also will roll out GE’s interventional, mammography, diagnostic cardiology, maternal and infant care, and anesthesia solutions across its ambulatory care centers.
The organization plans to open dozens of new care sites across Northern California in the coming years. These will include a cancer care outpost on its Memorial Medical Center campus in the California Central Valley and two flagship ambulatory facilities in the Silicon Valley. The latter will include diagnostic imaging services on both sites in Santa Clara, California.
GE HealthCare touted significant investments planned for Sutter Health’s workforce development programs. The nonprofit will work to beef up training and education of technologists, nurses and physicians. GE said it will assist in designing a talent development program focused on community outreach, collaboration with rad tech schools, and employee retention.
Sutter serves some 3.5 million patients annually and in 2023 logged a net operating income of $320 million with a 2% margin. The announcement did not disclose terms of the deal, but Bloomberg reported Tuesday that it’s expected to generate $1 billion in revenue over seven years.
Marty Stempniak has covered healthcare since 2012, with his byline appearing in the American Hospital Association's member magazine, Modern Healthcare and McKnight's. Prior to that, he wrote about village government and local business for his hometown newspaper in Oak Park, Illinois. He won a Peter Lisagor and Gold EXCEL awards in 2017 for his coverage of the opioid epidemic.