Our History

Overview
The Physician Foundation at California Pacific Medical Center (PFCPMC) is a non-profit medical organization affiliated with Sutter Health that provides clinical care, research and education.

Our mission is largely fulfilled in partnership with two medical groups:
> Physician Foundation Medical Associates (PFMA): A multi-specialty medical group with a special focus on tertiary and quaternary services
> Marin Headlands Medical Group: This medical group, founded in 2008 is based in Marin County and comprised of primary and specialty physicians.

The Physician Foundation and our medical groups have more than 110 employed physicians, 175 providers and a total staff of 400. We are dedicated to high quality, cost-effective patient care. Medical services are provided at more than 40 locations throughout Northern California and Nevada. Our primary practice sites are adjacent to the campuses of California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco.

Our goal is to provide our member physicians with an infrastructure for administrative and operational support (office management and staff, billing services, contract negotiation, risk management, continuing education, etc.), allowing them to focus on the practice of medicine.

Background
The Physician Foundation at California Pacific Medical Center was created in January 2003 with the following goals:

  • Create alternatives to the university model for specialty physicians
  • Create a “core faculty” to sustain graduate medical education
  • Create a vehicle for recruitment and retention of physicians committed to research and education
  • Expand the organization’s position as a major referral center
  • Provide services to communities that do not have ready access to those services

    Sutter Health Affiliation
    The Physician Foundation is part of Sutter Health and its Sutter Medical Network, a network of more than 3,000 Northern California primary care and specialist physicians committed to providing patients with more convenient access to consistently high-quality health care services.

    As part of this network, members of the Physician Foundation at California Pacific Medical Center commit to the rigorous process of working together to develop and follow clinical guidelines based on proven best medical practices, addressing nationally identified priorities for improving health care, seeking to improve affordability of health services and establishing standards for timely appointments and specialist referrals. All of these efforts ultimately benefit patients, their families and the employers who often help pay for health insurance.