More than a half century ago, a small group of hometown doctors who believed health care close to home should be something different, combined their genius to create NorthBay Healthcare.

To this day, we seek to be different for two reasons: to survive in a landscape over-colonized by big-box corporate systems, and to provide care better than they do.

We know we cannot be everything to everyone, but we strive to provide care as unique as every individual who comes to us. From a patient’s perspective, that means customizing care based on individual needs and desires. From a community perspective, that means providing a wide gamut of services to ensure we fill the gaps created by the big systems that are focused on the bottom line.

So in some cases NorthBay knowingly operates service lines or programs that do not pay for themselves. But because we are different, we understand these programs provide great benefits to our community. No one else chooses to be in the business of free hospice care, or operate an Alzheimer’s day center, or offer free prenatal care for low-income mothers-to-be, not to mention millions of dollars in unreimbursed care for the uninsured or underinsured.

Within the pages of the Wellspring edition you hold in your hands is a compilation of just how different our physicians are, how their talents vary, how we value diversity and alternative approaches to keeping people healthy and treating them when they are not.

We are willing to take the risk of establishing new ventures if it means better serving the public at large. That spurred us to open the first neonatal intensive care unit for premature newborns so parents and child wouldn’t be rushed off to another hospital far away. It drove us to create the first trauma center in Solano County. And it compelled us to advance medicine in a host of areas—cancer treatment, cardiovascular surgery, heart attack centers, women’s health and neuroscience, to name but a few.

We promise more in the future. We are not done being different. We are not done bringing more advanced medicine close to home. Stay tuned…

Gary Passama

President and Chief Executive Officer