Sutter Health affiliates received the following awards:

Best Birth Centers in the Bay Area:

• Mills-Peninsula Medical Center earned Gold for the Peninsula.
• Alta Bates Summit Medical Center received Bronze for the East Bay.
• California Pacific Medical Center earned the Bronze Award for the San Francisco/Marin area.

Best Pediatricians in the Bay Area:

• PAMF received the Gold Award for the Silicon Valley area.
• PAMF’s San Mateo Pediatrics Office received Silver for the Peninsula.

Best Hospitals in the Bay Area:

• California Pacific Medical Center won Silver for the San Francisco/Marin area.
• Mills-Peninsula Medical Center earned Bronze for the Peninsula.

Dr. Linda Oberstein, an internist at Sutter Health’s Palo Alto Medical Foundation in Burlingame and medical director of Senior Focus, will share some ideas on how to provide the best care, environment and support for a loved one with dementia. Methods of managing stress and making things easiest for both the patient and the family will be discussed.

The forum will be held in Auditorium One and Two at Mills-Peninsula Medical Center, 1501Trousdale Drive in Burlingame.

Registration is required. Please register by Sept. 26, 2016, by calling 650-696-3660 to register or for more information.

About Mills-Peninsula Health Services

Founded in 1908, Mills-Peninsula Health Services, is a Sutter Health affiliate providing top- ranked, patient-centered medical care and health care innovation at inpatient and outpatient facilities in Burlingame and San Mateo, California. For more information, visit millspeninsula.org.

Sutter Medical Center, Sacramento and Mills-Peninsula Health Services, both affiliates of Sutter Health, will be among the first in the country to offer patients with coronary artery disease a new treatment option, the Abbott Absorb stent, which literally disappears in the body over time.

Sailesh Shah, M.D., an interventional cardiologist at Sutter Medical Center and David Daniels, M.D., an interventional cardiologist at Mills-Peninsula will implant patients with the world’s first FDA-approved dissolving heart stent.

The Absorb bioresorbable vascular scaffold is a major advance in the treatment of coronary artery disease, which affects 15 million people in the United States and remains a leading cause of death worldwide despite decades of therapeutic advances.

While stents are traditionally made of metal, Abbott’s Absorb stent is made of a naturally dissolving material, similar to dissolving sutures. Absorb disappears completely[1] in about three years, after it has done its job of keeping a clogged artery open and promoting healing of the treated artery segment. By contrast, metal stents are permanent implants.

“This is the first real game-changer in coronary stents since 2003,when drug-coated metal stents were developed, helping to reduce risk of renarrowing of the arteries,” Dr. Daniels explained. “With dissolving stents you have the best of both worlds: you have the benefit of using a less invasive procedure than open heart surgery, and then the stent disappears, leaving no metal behind to restrict motion of the blood vessels.”

To ensure optimal patient selection and implant technique, Sutter’s interventional cardiology teams underwent extensive training on the new device. Dr. Daniels is one of a small group of physicians nationwide who train other interventional cardiologists on complex stenting procedures.

“The real benefit to the patient is better arterial health,” said Dr. Shah. “This new stent does not reduce bed rest or allow you to take fewer medicines, but it does promote better arterial health because you don’t have metal constricting your arteries and it facilitates the return of natural vascular function.” Dr. Shah occasionally returns to his native India to volunteer his time as a cardiologist, and began implanting the dissolving heart stent on patients there three years ago.

Sutter Health’s cardiovascular services bring together a multidisciplinary approach that provides the full continuum of cardiovascular care for our patients. More information about the Absorb dissolving heart stent is available online.

About Sutter Health

Serving patients and their families in more than 100 Northern California cities and towns, Sutter Health doctors, not-for-profit hospitals and other health care service providers share resources and expertise to advance health care quality and access. The Sutter Medical Network includes many of California’s top-performing, highest-quality physician organizations as measured annually by the Integrated Healthcare Association. Sutter-affiliated hospitals are regional leaders in cardiac care, women’s and children’s services, cancer care, orthopedics and advanced patient-safety technology. Sutter Health cares for more than 3 million people—nearly 1 percent of the U.S. population. For more information about the not-for-profit Sutter Health network visit: sutterhealth.org | facebook.com/sutterhealth | youtube.com/sutterhealth | twitter.com/sutterhealth

Contact:

Gary Zavoral

Communications Program Manager

Sutter Health Valley Area

916-542-0350

ZavoraG@sutterhealth.org

Monique Binkley Smith

Manager, News Bureau

Sutter Health| Mills-Peninsula Health Services

650-387-7216

binklemt@sutterhealth.org

[1] Absorb dissolves except for two pairs of tiny metallic markers that remain in the artery to enable a physician to see where the device was placed.

Once constructed, the helipad will facilitate transport of critically ill patients and enhance Mills-Peninsula’s participation in the newly-launched Sutter Health medical transport network. Via air ambulance, critically ill patients will be transported more quickly and efficiently – both within the Sutter Health network and outside of it.

The helipad will also help ensure residents continue to have access to emergency care in the event a disaster, such as an earthquake, renders roadways impassable.

“We’re making this investment in a helipad to enhance the health and safety of our community,” Mills-Peninsula Health Services CEO Janet Wagner said. “We expect it to greatly improve our ability to quickly transport patients who need immediate medical treatment.”

The $2.5 million dollar helipad is being built in the parking lot adjacent to Mills-Peninsula’s Emergency Department.

Technically, the 65-foot square helipad is a helideck because of its tabletop design: the landing area will be on a raised and lighted platform, 12 feet above ground level, with a gurney ramp for entry and exit. Beneath the landing surface, Mills-Peninsula will store disaster supplies.

Mills-Peninsula’s helipad will accommodate two types of helicopters: Lifeflight emergency air ambulance service and Jayhawks, which are typically used in Coast Guard rescue operations.

Plans for the replacement helipad, along with those for the medical center and adjacent medical office building, were originally approved by the City of Burlingame in 2004. Escalating construction costs for the medical center necessitated postponement of the helipad construction, but now, Wagner said the time is right to complete the last phase of the original master construction plan and fulfill Mills-Peninsula’s commitment to the community.

“There are situations when an extremely fragile or sick patient, such as someone who has had a stroke, must be brought very quickly to the hospital and because of traffic, ground transport by ambulance won’t be fast enough. The helipad will allow us to get those patients to the hospital much faster. In the case of a stroke patient, we know faster treatment means better odds for survival and full recovery,” Wagner said.

Construction of the helipad is scheduled to be completed later this fall.

About Mills-Peninsula Health Services

Founded in 1908, Mills-Peninsula Health Services, is a Sutter Health affiliate providing top ranked, patient centered medical care and health care innovation at inpatient and outpatient facilities in Burlingame and San Mateo, California. For more information, visit millspeninsula.org.

The quality measures include aggressive use of medications, such as antithrombotics, anticoagulation therapy, deep vein thrombosis prophylaxis, cholesterol reducing drugs and smoking cessation – all aimed at reducing death and disability and improving the lives of stroke patients.

“Our expert stroke team is dedicated to providing the highest quality care for our patients,” says Janet Wagner, Mills-Peninsula CEO. “We are honored to be recognized by the American Heart Association and American Stroke Association with the Gold Plus award for quality and timely stroke treatment.”

Mills-Peninsula also received the Target: Stroke Honor Roll Elite recognition for quickly treating stroke patients with tissue plasminogen activator (tPA), the drug that breaks up clots that cause a stroke. The Honor Roll Elite designation means that during the past quarter, at least 75 percent of Mills-Peninsula’s eligible ischemic stroke patients received tPA within 60 minutes of arrival to the hospital (known as door-to-needle time).

AHA/ASA’s Get With The Guidelines is a national quality-improvement program for hospitals designed to ensure care for cardiac and stroke patients follows the most up-to-date, evidence-based guidelines and recommendations.

Mills-Peninsula Health Services and the African American Community Health Advisory Committee (AACHAC) organize this annual event to raise awareness about good nutrition and physical activity as keys to good health.

Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins, Honorary Chair

There will be one-, three- and five-mile courses marked along a beautiful bay-front path. The event also includes health screenings and a health fair focused on topics such as diabetes, heart disease and sickle cell disease, as well as children’s activities. More than 50 resource partners will be at the event distributing information and health-related advice, and conducting on-site health screenings.

The celebrity chair for this year’s event is singer/songwriter Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins, lead singer of the R&B/hip hop musical group TLC. TLC has won five Grammy Awards.

Learn more about this year’s event and register on the AACHAC website.

The Cardiovascular Department at Mills-Peninsula Health Services is one of the first in the United States to offer a new treatment recently cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to provide relief for patients suffering from the painful symptoms of peripheral artery disease, or PAD — a condition caused by a build-up of plaque that blocks blood flow in the arteries to the legs and feet.

Dirk Baumann, M.D.

Dirk Baumann, M.D. and Stephanie Lin, M.D., vascular surgeons at Mills-Peninsula, are two of the first physicians in the country using Avinger’s Pantheris lumivascular atherectomy system, the first-ever, image-guided atherectomy device for the treatment of PAD.

In the past, physicians have had to rely on X-ray and touch to guide their tools while they try to treat complicated arterial disease. Using optical coherence tomography (OCT), the Pantheris lumivascular technology allows physicians, for the first time ever, to see inside the artery in real time while they navigate through the artery to remove plaque and restore blood flow.

With the Pantheris device, physicians are able to see and remove plaque simultaneously and more precisely than ever before. For patients, this targeted treatment may reduce the risk of damage to the artery walls, which can result in aggressive scarring that greatly increases the risk of restenosis, or re-narrowing of the artery, and reduce the need for follow-up procedures and stents.

Stephanie Lin, M.D.

“Peripheral artery disease is a common, costly disease that greatly impacts quality of life, with patients experiencing lower extremity cramping, pain and sometimes non-healing wounds.” says Dr. Lin. “We are excited to use the Pantheris technology. It offers our patients a significant step forward in the treatment of the condition, enabling OCT-guided and physician-directed removal of the plaque that is the cause of the symptoms of PAD.”

Over the years, Mills-Peninsula’s cardiovascular specialists have partnered with a variety of Silicon Valley medical device companies to create, design and refine the latest cardiovascular technology. Working with Avinger’s founder and Pantheris inventor, Dr. John Simpson, Dr. Lin has helped test and fine-tune the Pantheris device. In 2015, Dr. Lin was the first to introduce OCT technology and the Avinger Ocelot catheter to the Bay Area region. The Ocelot catheter pioneered the use of optical technology to see the inside of a blood vessel, helping vascular interventionalists to better assess whether they are pushing against plaque or the artery wall and enable passage through chronically occluded arteries. The Avinger OCT equipment at Mills-Peninsula was fully funded by community philanthropy.

Clinical results confirm that the Pantheris technology is safe and effective: a 130-patient study showed a target lesion revascularization rate of just 8 percent. Further, not a single event of vessel perforation, clinically significant dissection or late aneurysm resulted from Pantheris. In addition, this radiation-free technology can minimize radiation exposure to clinicians and patients by decreasing use of fluoroscopy.

Peripheral artery disease affects nearly 20 million adults in the U.S.[i] and over 200 million people globally.[ii] Symptoms of PAD include painful cramping or pain in the legs or feet. PAD can become so severe and difficult to address with traditional treatments that patients and physicians often resort to invasive bypass surgeries, which can result in even higher health risks and lengthy, painful recoveries. In severe cases, patients often face amputation, the worst-case scenario associated with PAD.

About Mills-Peninsula Health Services
Founded in 1908, Mills-Peninsula Health Services is a Sutter Health affiliate providing top ranked, patient centered medical care and health care innovation at inpatient and outpatient facilities in Burlingame and San Mateo, California. For more information, visit millspeninsula.org | facebook.com/millspeninsula | twitter.com/millspeninsula.

For more information, contact:
Shannon Hare
Marketing, Communications and Public Affairs
Sutter Health
650-625-3817
hares2@sutterhealth.org

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

[i] The Sage Group releases New Estimates for the United States Prevalence of Peripheral Artery Disease (PAD) and Critical Limb Ischemia (CLI). The Sage Group. September 30, 2010. http://thesagegroup.us/pages/news/pad-cli-new-numbers-10.php.

[ii] Fowkes FG, Rudan D, Rudan I, et al. “Comparison of global estimates of prevalence and risk factors for peripheral artery disease in 2000 and 2010: a systematic review and analysis.” Lancet 2013; 382:1329.

In November 2015, Mills-Peninsula’s Emergency Department gained expanded stroke treatment expertise through a new telestroke service collaboration with California Pacific Medical Center (CPMC), a Sutter Health affiliate in San Francisco.

The telestroke service allows CPMC stroke neurologists to assess stroke patients at Mills-Peninsula in real time through a high-definition video and audio connection. Working in collaboration with a Mills-Peninsula ED physician, a stroke neurologist at CPMC is able to assess the Mills-Peninsula stroke patient, communicate with the patient and the patient’s family, and access all related tests, X-rays and scans.  

“With this service, not only will our physicians have immediate access to a stroke neurologist, but more importantly the patient and family will also be able to speak to a specialist using two-way communication and make a decision about their care in that emergent situation,” says Jenny Im, Mills-Peninsula’s stroke coordinator.

Time is especially critical when treating a stroke. Research shows that stroke patients who are treated with the blood clot-busting medicine tPA as soon as possible after the stroke onset have dramatically improved outcomes and less disability. A manual clot-removal procedure, called a mechanical thrombectomy, also must be performed within a set window of time after a stroke to be effective.

Depending on the treatment needed, some stroke patients who arrive at Mills-Peninsula’s ED will be admitted to Mills-Peninsula Medical Center for further treatment and some will be transferred by ambulance to CPMC for treatment. CPMC specializes in the mechanical thrombectomy procedure and other complex procedures to stop brain bleeding.

How to recognize signs of a stroke.

Tips to lower your stroke risk.

The Top Performer program recognizes U.S. hospitals for providing quality health care, specifically for excellence in evidence-based clinical processes shown to improve care for certain medical conditions. Mills-Peninsula was recognized for excellence in care for heart attack, heart failure, pneumonia, surgical care and perinatal care.

“Our teams take great pride in providing each patient with the highest quality care,” says Janet Wagner, Mills-Peninsula CEO. “This recognition from The Joint Commission affirms Mills-Peninsula’s dedication to quality and excellence in all we do.”

About the Recognitions
The Joint Commission Top Performer winners must meet three performance criteria based on 2014 accountability measure data, including:

• Achieving cumulative performance of 95 percent or above across all reported accountability measures;
• Achieving performance of 95 percent on each and every reported accountability measure with at least 30 denominator cases; and
• Having at least one core measure with a composite rate of 95 percent or above, and (within that measure set) all applicable individual accountability measures with a performance rate of 95 percent or above.

The other 12 Sutter Health hospitals recognized this year include:

• Eden Medical Center
• Novato Community Hospital
• Sutter Delta Medical Center
• Sutter Lakeside Hospital
• Sutter Maternity and Surgery Center, Santa Cruz
• Sutter Santa Rosa Regional Hospital
• Memorial Hospital Los Banos
• Sutter Auburn Faith Hospital
• Sutter Davis Hospital
• Sutter Solano Medical Center
• Sutter Coast Hospital
• Kahi Mohala Behavioral Health in Hawaii

The Top Performer recognition occurs in the fall of each year and coincides with the Joint Commission’s America’s Hospitals: Improving Quality and Safety annual report.

About Mills-Peninsula Health Services
Founded in 1908, Mills-Peninsula Health Services, is a Sutter Health affiliate providing top ranked, patient centered medical care and health care innovation at inpatient and outpatient facilities in Burlingame and San Mateo, California. For more information, visit millspeninsula.org | facebook.com/millspeninsula | twitter.com/millspeninsula | our blog.

Kimberly M. Dalal, M.D., FACS.

Kimberly Moore Dalal, M.D., FACS, medical director of Surgical Oncology at Mills-Peninsula Medical Center and graduate of the Sutter Leadership Academy, has been elected to serve on the American College of Surgeons Commission on Cancer (CoC).

The Commission on Cancer (CoC) is a nationwide consortium of professional organizations dedicated to improving survival and quality of life for cancer patients through standard-setting, prevention, research, education and quality monitoring.

Dr. Dalal represents the Fellowship of the American College of Surgeons, which is comprised of 80,000 fellows.

The CoC establishes standards to ensure quality cancer care delivery and conducts surveys in health care settings to assess compliance with those standards, develops educational resources to improve cancer prevention and early detection, and advocates for providers and their patients.

“I am honored to be contributing to the American College of Surgeons and the Commission on Cancer to improve the quality of care for cancer patients in our community and in the United States,” Dr. Dalal says.

Learn about the American College of Surgeons Commission on Cancer.

Learn about cancer services at Mills-Peninsula.