With $175M gift, Silicon Valley is getting a new medical school

Silicon Valley is getting a new medical school, and it will be the first in the San Francisco Bay Area in many years.

Sutter Health and Santa Clara University have announced plans to partner and build a new medical school. They announced a $175 million gift from Mark and Mary Stevens, and the medical school will bear their names. Mark Stevens is a billionaire venture capitalist, and Mary Stevens graduated from Santa Clara University; the couple have previously donated millions to the university.

Warner Thomas, president and CEO of Sutter Health, hailed the prospect of building a new medical school in the Bay Area.

“This partnership is part of a larger vision for Sutter Health and a key step in our broader strategy to build a leading learning health system — where medical education, research and care work together to shape the future of medicine,” Thomas wrote in a post on LinkedIn.

The plans call for an 82,000-square-foot building near the Sutter East Santa Clara Campus in Silicon Valley. The timetable for the opening of the new medical school hasn’t been announced.

Sutter Health is also building Sutter’s West Santa Clara Campus, a new, 272-bed medical center, close to the new med school. The medical center is slated to open in 2031.

Weeks before the announcement, Thomas told Chief Healthcare Executive® in an April interview that Sutter Health saw a need to help build a pipeline of physicians. While he gave no indication of the plans for a new medical school, Thomas described the need to prepare more people for careers in healthcare.

“We're also working to train the next generation of physicians and clinicians and nurses,” Thomas said, adding, “We view training the next generation as part of our responsibility.”

Sutter Health operates medical education programs today, and the system expects to train about 575 residents and fellows by the end of 2027. But the system says California is experiencing a physician shortage, and the new medical school will give a boost to efforts to train more doctors.

Julie Sullivan, president of Santa Clara University, said she is “profoundly grateful for the extraordinary naming gift from the Stevens family.”

“We are proud to partner with Sutter Health to create a world-class medical school to produce physicians who are continually anticipating and defining the future of healthcare,” Sullivan said in a news release. “Our new school will be grounded in Santa Clara’s Jesuit tradition of keeping the needs of the whole person at the forefront of empathetic and trustworthy care, while also embedding innovative technologies that assist physicians in keeping individuals, families, and communities well.”

Mark Stevens said he is excited about building a medical school in the heart of Silicon Valley. And he said that the new academic institution will be embracing cutting-edge technology, including artificial intelligence.

“The unique partnership of California’s oldest university, a large and well-respected Northern California integrated healthcare delivery network, and our investment will deliver the next generation of physicians and clinicians,” he said in a statement accompanying the announcement. “This new school will be at the forefront of the integration of artificial intelligence technology with healthcare delivery.”

Based in Sacramento, Sutter Health operates 27 hospitals and hundreds of healthcare locations. Sutter Health has opened 45 facilities since 2023, and the system aims to open new facilities in northern California in the next few years.

Sutter Health is also looking to merge with Allina Health, the health system based in Minnesota. If regulators sign off on the deal, Allina will become part of Sutter Health and the newly merged system will include 39 hospitals and boast $26 billion in revenue.

• Read more: Sutter Health CEO Warner Thomas says shrinking won’t lead to success