ROSEVILLE, Calif. – A new medical residency program is being launched this year in one of the fastest-growing cities in California in an effort to train and retain qualified physicians and medical specialists to care for the burgeoning region.

Sutter Roseville Medical Center is becoming a teaching hospital, having recently received accreditations for a graduate medical education program in two specialties – surgery and internal medicine – and plans to add at least three more residency tracks within the next five years. It is the latest and largest teaching program in Sutter’s integrated network to offer this advanced training to upcoming physicians. The first 19 resident physicians will begin summer 2022, and the program is expected to expand to include up to 150 residents.

Rapid and significant population growth, combined with an aging population, have already challenged the healthcare capacity in South Placer County and throughout the greater Sacramento region. The multidisciplinary residency program is an opportunity for Sutter to remain ahead of the projected growth and continue delivering high-quality patient care — squarely at the heart of Sutter’s mission as a not-for-profit integrated network of care, said Sutter Roseville CEO Brian Alexander.

“Sutter Roseville is a leading center for the treatment of strokes, heart attacks, traumatic injury, acute rehab and more — exceptionally high-quality care that we deliver in one of the fastest-growing areas in the region,” Alexander said. “Becoming a teaching hospital with a robust graduate medical education program is an opportunity to pass along that expertise to the next generation of physicians, stay up to speed on emerging best practices, and open doors to more care for our patients.”

With challenges in recruiting physicians in many specialties and a high percentage of doctors nearing retirement age, this program will help establish a pipeline of highly qualified, homegrown physicians for the multicounty region served by Sutter Roseville.

“Providing patients with access to the care they need is central to what we do here, so much so that it’s one of the key results against which we hold ourselves accountable,” said Peter Hull, M.D., Sutter Roseville’s chief medical executive. “Establishing these residency programs is an investment in future access to high-quality care.”

Surgical Residents to Encounter Range of Rotations

Sutter Roseville’s surgery residency program will welcome six residents per year to a program that includes rotations in general surgery, thoracic surgery, urology, trauma, plastic surgery, surgical oncology and cardiac surgery, and later in endoscopy, pediatric surgery and transplant and hepato-pancreato-biliary surgery.

Sutter Roseville is a level II trauma center that features 10 main operating rooms, two surgery centers with five operating rooms each, an endoscopy center and the da Vinci Robotic Surgery System. The program is led by trauma surgeon Jon Perlstein, M.D., chair of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery at Sutter Roseville. He has also served as the Surgery Program Director at David Grant USAF Medical Center, and currently serves as an associate professor at two universities.

“Sutter Roseville consistently ranks among top performers in providing high-quality, affordable patient care, both regionally and statewide,” he said. “Our inaugural surgical residents will have the opportunity to not only help shape a world-class program from the ground up, but to gain a depth and breadth of experience unique to our hospital and its place in our region.”

For more on the Surgery Residency Program, go to https://www.suttermd.com/education/residency/srmc-surgery.

Internal Medicine Residents to Help Drive Quality Improvement

Roseville’s internal medicine residency program has 13 openings for residents, who would begin next year. It will cover three years and include not only the establishment of key skills, but also clinical experience in general internal medicine as well as subspecialties.

Residents will select elective experiences to tailor their training to their interests, whether that be primary care, hospitalist medicine or post-residency fellowship training. A unique feature is being able to participate in quality improvement initiatives, both those driven by the hospital and those they identify and create themselves.

The internal medicine program is led by Van Geslani, M.D., who has served as chief resident, core faculty and associate program director in the internal medicine residency program of Loma Linda University and has been working clinically as a hospitalist at Sutter Roseville.

“At Sutter Roseville, we’re as proud of the quality of our broad-based internal medicine program as we are of the open, welcoming environment,” Geslani said. “I’m excited for these residents, who will be prepared for a lifelong career in medicine by some of the best physicians, colleagues and mentors to be found.”

For more on the Internal Medicine Residency program, go to https://www.suttermd.com/education/residency/srmc-internal-medicine.

Program Is an Investment in Region’s Future

Sutter Roseville is currently preparing the campus to welcome the physician residents summer of 2022, and is evaluating additional accreditations in emergency medicine, anesthesiology, physical medicine and rehabilitation, among others. Sutter Health already has an established institutional accreditation through the Accreditation Council of Graduate Medical Education for all physician graduate education programs under its auspices, represented in the Valley Area by the Family Medicine Residency Program based at Sutter Medical Center, Sacramento, and its rural medicine extension at Sutter Amador Hospital.

Sutter Roseville’s $30 million teaching program will also receive philanthropic support from foundations, corporations and individuals who share its vision to train future physicians and allow patients to continue to have adequate access to quality care. The funding will be used not only to build out the program and hire additional staff, but also to construct teaching spaces, call rooms, a surgical simulator and other facility enhancements.

“Sutter Roseville has a long history of strong, quality community healthcare for residents throughout our region, and we will continue to invest and meet community needs by expanding crucial services and care,” Alexander said. “Becoming a teaching hospital will help us carry on that long-standing tradition.”