Sutter Health draws upon our employees’ diversity to broaden our organization’s viewpoint, to increase our staff’s knowledge and sensitivity, and to cultivate future leaders. IWe support our organizational goals of providing excellent, compassionate, personalized care to every patient, every time.

Visionary leadership

Sutter Health leaders have established an ambitious strategic vision: to transform health care so that all patients receive the highest levels of quality, access and affordability. “Destination 2012” sets the course to collaborate and center our focus on the health and well-being of all patients. Appreciating and embracing diversity is an important part of this strategy. We invite you to share the adventure and discover how it will affect you as a new or seasoned employee of Sutter Health.

The language of understanding

Multilingual communication skills have never been more important in the continuum of patient care. According to the latest government census report, 1.5 million residents in the communities we serve speak languages other than English at home. Within our primary service area, 32.8 percent speak a language other than English.

To help patients who speak little or no English, Sutter Health provides language assistance resources. These include translated documents, telephone interpreter services, and onsite bilingual staff. Our interpreters must pass a language competency test to ensure that they are competent in both English and their second spoken language.

Organizational cultural competence

Sutter Health believes in creating an environment where the individuality of our patients and employees is always respected. Systemwide, we are intent on creating a set of behaviors, attitudes and policies to enable people from all cultures to work together effectively. This means treating patients and colleagues with dignity, courtesy and respect, being sensitive to the implications of our words, and learning to appreciate and value differences.

How does it affect the delivery of health care?
As we enhance cultural competence throughout the organization, we will mark our progress through:

• Clinical Quality – enhancing provider/patient interaction
• Service Excellence - eliminating health care disparities
• Community Benefit – building partnerships of trust
• Targeted Growth – increasing diverse market share
• Financial – supporting cost-effective use of services
• People – fostering an inclusive work environment

What does diversity mean to our organization?
Because we value diversity at Sutter Health:

• We consider cultural self- assessments essential
• We manage the dynamics of cultural differences
• We teach cultural knowledge
• We embrace the cultural diversity of the communities we serve.

The road ahead
Each step leads to awareness and sensitivity to differences in our patient population and the multi-talented diversity of our workforce. The driving force is our management’s commitment to this focus area, and the fuel is every employee’s ability to interact respectfully with our patients and colleagues. The destination is the achievement of the Sutter Health mission