Sentara Health: 2025 Year in Review

Sentara Health closed 2025 with meaningful progress in care quality, access to care, financial stability, and community impact. It was a year shaped by teamwork and innovation.

Sentara achieved its shortest hospital stays ever, helping patients recover and return home sooner. The system also reached its lowest mortality rate on record, which meant 250 more people survived serious illness compared to the year before. 

Sentara improved how quickly it recognizes and treats sepsis, a fast-moving infection that can become life-threatening within hours, by 245% since 2021, placing all 12 hospitals in the top quarter nationwide.

Every eligible Sentara hospital is now Magnet designated, the highest honor in nursing excellence. Four hospitals earned Magnet with Distinction: Sentara Albemarle Medical Center, Sentara Leigh Hospital, Sentara Martha Jefferson Hospital, and Sentara Northern Virginia Medical Center.

For quality and patient experience, Sentara ranks in the top 3% of all health systems in the country and it ranks in the top 7% nationally for stability and stewardship.

Making care easier to access

Sentara launched a unified Sentara.com, giving patients and health plan members a single digital entry point. A new automated scheduling tool reduced wait times for new appointments by 25 to 40 days depending on the specialty. And a new Voice of the Consumer program now gathers real-time feedback to guide improvements.

Investing in people

Sentara welcomed 7,000+ new hires, supported 12,000 colleagues pursuing continuing education, and provided emergency assistance to more than 640 families through the employee-focused HOPE Fund. 

Virtual nursing delivered 16,000+ hours of patient and staff support across all hospitals. Sentara added five new medical group practices and 315 new physicians and advanced practice providers.

In August, Sentara opened the $248 million Sentara Albemarle Medical Center, replacing a 65-year-old facility and expanding access to care in northeast North Carolina. 

Sentara also continued construction of the Sentara Halifax Regional Hospital replacement in South Boston, Virginia, and expanded Sentara Community Care’s footprint with two mobile units and two new centers.

One Sentara Transformation: everyone has a voice

The One Sentara Transformation continued to reshape how the organization works. More than 1,700 colleagues served as initiative and milestone owners, leading 900+ improvement projects tied to Sentara’s long-term plans.

These projects include redesigning and modernizing Sentara’s three inpatient rehabilitation facilities, expanding behavioral health, creating a nurse advice line, and creating in-home testing for Sentara Health Plan members. 

This transformation work is expected to generate $841 million in positive impact by the end of 2026.

Technology that gives time back

Sentara expanded the use of tools like DAX Copilot, which listens during a visit with a doctor or other provider and automatically drafts clinical notes. This saves clinicians up to an hour a day and lets them look patients in the eye instead of at a computer. 

Strengthening communities

Sentara invested $350 million in community benefits including uncompensated care, disease prevention programs, the training of future healthcare workers, and direct community giving. Colleagues raised $1.34 million for United Way and served on 595 community boards.

2025 proved that through teamwork, innovation, and unwavering commitment to our mission to improve health every day, Sentara is ready for the future.