Sutter Health is planning on opening four new facilities in Manteca, Lathrop, and Tracy.

They include a 17,000 square-foot health care complex at Orchard Valley across from JC Penney.

It will  feature  primary care, diagnostic imaging, and lab services as well as increased specialty care in OB/Gyn, orthopedics and more.

Sutter Health will retain its current location at 165 St. Dominic’s Drive near Kaiser Hospital.

Once the Orchard Valley location is opened in an existing free-standing building in early 2025, Sutter Health will convert its space on St. Domnic’s Drive into a behavioral health care center to meet the growing demand for such services.

Sutter Health will also open an urgent care facility in Lathrop in the Target center near where Sprouts Market in located.

A second Lathrop facility that would be a general health care center could be built at River islands at Lathrop.

In addition, Sutter is expanding its footprint in Tracy where it has other facilities including a hospital.

The Tracy project involves a former Rite Aid on Valpico Road that will be repurposed into primary and urgent care services.

Altogether, Sutter Health is pursuing 32 projects in the Central Valley to step up and expand services provided to various communities

“People want to access health care near where they live,” noted Amber Campbell, Ambulatory CEO for Sutter Health’s Greater Central Valley.

Campbell is a Sierra High graduate.

Sutter operates Memorial Hospital in Modesto and a surgery center in  Stockton.

As such, the expansion will position Sutter Health to capitalize on South County growth — Manteca, Lathrop, Tracy and Mountain House for the past six years have been perennially been one of the top three fastest growing region in California.

It also will give existing residents options as more and more long-time medical providers in the region are retiring.

The development of River Islands and Mountain House has also done something San Joaquin County has struggled with for years — getting medical professional including doctors to settle in the area.

A number already have, creating a strong pool of medical professionals that would like to practice where they are raising families instead of commuting to the Bay Area.

“Gould Medical Group (the health care arm of Sutter Health) is doing a phenomenal job recruiting and welcoming new physicians into their group,” said Campbell, “so we have opportunities to add new care space in our current locations to enable them to build for their practices.”

Infrastructure improvements are also planned for existing nearby Sutter locations.

At 600 Coffee Road in Modesto, for example, space on the second and third floors of the four-story complex will be converted to primary and specialty care clinic space.

Construction is already underway to add diagnostic imaging services, expanding MRI capabilities and creating space for mobile imaging equipment.

Advanced diagnostic upgrades are also in progress for Sutter Gould’s Stockton Care Center.

At the Sutter Gould facilities on Spanos Court in Modesto (next to Sutter Memorial Medical Center), plans call for moving the neurosurgery suite to a new 5,000 square foot space to allow for growth in neurosurgery care.

 Their weight loss management program will then move to the vacated space to allow for that program to grow as well.

“We will also add nearly 2,000 square feet of care space to our already-existing Women’s Health Center to accommodate incoming/newly recruited clinicians who will serve as faculty in Graduate Medical Education programs, where we will train new physicians to help meet the demand in our community,” said Campbell.

The third floor of one of the main buildings of the Stockton Medical Plaza campus on Hammer Lane will see the build-out of existing space to create room for additional primary care practices.

Sutter Gould’s Lodi Primary Care Center on Ham Lane, for example, will add space for behavioral health providers and pulmonary specialists.

Meanwhile, the third floor of one of the main buildings on the Stockton Medical Plaza campus on Hammer Lane will see the build-out of existing space to create room for additional primary care practices.

 The current Tracy care center on Eaton Avenue will expand to bring in more.

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com