Sutter Medical Center in Sacramento celebrates its 100-year anniversary
SACRAMENTO — Sutter Medical Center in Sacramento is throwing a big party this weekend to celebrate its 100-year anniversary.
It was back in 1923 that Sutter first opened its doors in a building across the street from Sutter's Fort.
"One hundred years ago, it formed out of the response of the Spanish influenza," said Keri Thomas, the hospital's vice president.
Nurse Loni Howard has been with the hospital for 42 years and worked in the original building. She said a lot has changed since the early days.
"One of the things is volume," she said. "At the old hospital, I worked ER for a while and we didn't see a whole lot of patients, and now the amount of patients that we see is 10 times as much, at least."
The old hospital building has been torn down to make way for a larger medical campus that today stretches three blocks long.
"We serve 170,000 patients a year," Thomas said.
Sutter's birthing center has helped the Sacramento population grow, delivering more than 407,000 babies.
"We have been known as the baby hospital," Thomas said.
One of the biggest health care improvements has been in the hospital's surgical capability.
"It used to be really simple before, and now we're doing all these advanced procedures on patients that didn't exist back then," Howard said.
Over the decades, Sutter was the first in the region to perform heart surgeries and was the first in the world to perform robotic hip surgery – 30 years ago – with technology that is now in the Smithsonian.
"We do look for the future," said Angie Romo, Sutter's nursing supervisor. "We know medicine is changing and we're trying to do everything we can to keep up."
The anniversary festival is free and open to the public. It's being held Saturday from noon to 5 p.m. at 28th Street and Capitol Avenue.
