Sujatha Sankaran, MD
Professor
Medicine
School of Medicine

She then worked as an Academic Hospitalist at Columbia University before joining an outpatient medical practice for five years and then joining the Division of Hospital Medicine as an Assistant Clinical Professor in 2011. Sujatha has worked extensively in global health, starting a non-governmental organization aimed at training health workers in the developing world to prevent chronic cardiovascular disease in 2008, and in 2015 was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to study mechanisms for cardiovascular disease management in under-resourced areas of Southern India.

Sujatha has also worked on tobacco policy research in India and was formerly the medical director for Smoking Cessation at Moffitt-Long Hospital and until July 2023 was the medical director for inpatient substance use at UCSF Health. In this role, she spearheaded efforts to build an inpatient substance use management program and chairs the Substance Use Committee.

From 2017 to 2021, Sujatha was the director of the quality and safety program for the Department of Neurosurgery. In this role, she led a number of quality improvement projects for the department, delivered a quality improvement curriculum to the neurosurgery residents, led efforts to improve patient safety through the incident reporting and M&M systems, sat on the Neuro unit based leadership team, and acted as a representative of the neurosurgery department in institution-wide efforts to improve quality of neurosurgical care.

Sujatha has a career interest on the intersection between health equity, health care leadership, and high-quality care, and in 2021, she was accepted into the California Health Care Foundation leadership fellowship. In 2023, she graduated from the UCSF Health Learning Health System Coach Program. In November 2022, she became the Chief Medical Officer of one the UCSF-affiliated hospitals, Sonoma Valley Hospital, in Sonoma County. At Sonoma Valley Hospital, Sujatha is focused on improving access to subspecialty care, building a geriatric program, supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion work, and bolstering the linkages between UCSF Health and Sonoma Valley Hospital.

• Racial Differences in Postoperative Opioid Prescribing Practices in Spine Surgical Patients.
  Neurosurgery 2022 Letchuman V, He L, Mummaneni PV, Agarwal N, Campbell LJ, Shabani S, Chan AK, Abrecht CR, Miller C, Sankaran S, Rambachan A, Croci R, Berven SH, Chou D, Holly LT, Guan Z
• Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Neurosurgical Transfers: A Single Tertiary Center Study.
  World neurosurgery 2022 Reihl SJ, Garcia JH, Morshed RA, Sankaran S, DiGiorgio A, Chou D, Theodosopoulos PV, Aghi MK, Berger MS, Chang EF, Mummaneni PV
• Are preoperative chlorhexidine gluconate showers associated with a reduction in surgical site infection following craniotomy? A retrospective cohort analysis of 3126 surgical procedures.
  Journal of neurosurgery 2021 Ammanuel SG, Edwards CS, Chan AK, Mummaneni PV, Kidane J, Vargas E, D'Souza S, Nichols AD, Sankaran S, Abla AA, Aghi MK, Chang EF, Hervey-Jumper SL, Kunwar S, Larson PS, Lawton MT, Starr PA, …
• Preoperative Chlorhexidine Showers Are Not Associated With a Reduction in Surgical Site Infection Following Craniotomy.
  Neurosurgery 2020 Simon G Ammanuel, Caleb S Edwards, Andrew K.H Chan, Praveen V Mummaneni, Joseph Kidane, Enrique Vargas, Sarah D’Souza, Amy D Nichols, Sujatha Sankaran, Adib A Abla, Manish K Aghi, Edward F Chang, …
• A Safe Transitions Pathway for post-craniotomy neurological surgery patients: high-value care that bypasses the intensive care unit.
  Journal of neurosurgery 2020 Young JS, Chan AK, Viner JA, Sankaran S, Chan AY, Imershein S, Meary-Miller A, Theodosopoulos PV, Jacques L, Aghi MK, Chang EF, Hervey-Jumper SL, Ward T, Gibson L, Ward MM, Sanftner P, Wong S, Amara D…
• Patient safety movement in neurological surgery: the current state and future directions.
  Journal of neurosurgery 2019 Sankaran S, Andrews JP, Chicas M, Wachter RM, Berger MS
• Safe Transitions Pathway for Postcraniotomy Neurological Surgery Patients: High-Value Care That Bypasses the Intensive Care Unit.
  Neurosurgery 2019 Jacob S Young, Andrew Kai-Hong Chan, Jennifer Viner, Sujatha Sankaran, Alvin Y Chan, Dominic Amara, Stephen T Magill, Joseph A Osorio, Lizbeth Gibson, Peter Sanftner, Mariann Ward, Tracy Ward, Stacy …
• Preoperative risk stratification of patient mortality following elective craniotomy; a comparative analysis of prediction algorithms.
  Journal of clinical neuroscience : official journal of the Neurosurgical Society of Australasia 2019 Rutkowski M, Sankaran S
• Delirium Risk Factors and Associated Outcomes in a Neurosurgical Cohort: A Case-Control Study.
  World neurosurgery 2019 Morshed RA, Young JS, Safaee M, Sankaran S, Berger MS, McDermott MW, Hervey-Jumper SL
• A Reduced Exogenous Steroid Taper for Postoperative Brain Tumor Patients-A Case-Control Study.
  World neurosurgery 2019 Breshears JD, Haddad AF, Viner J, Rau J, Sankaran S, McDermott MW
• Postoperative Delirium in Glioblastoma Patients: Risk Factors and Prognostic Implications.
  Neurosurgery 2018 Flanigan PM, Jahangiri A, Weinstein D, Dayani F, Chandra A, Kanungo I, Choi S, Sankaran S, Molinaro AM, McDermott MW, Berger MS, Aghi MK
• 334 Interfacility Neurosurgical Transfers: An Analysis of Nontraumatic Inpatient and Emergency Department Transfers With Implications for Improvements In Care.
  Neurosurgery 2018 Michael Safaee, Ramin A Morshed, Jordan Spatz, Sujatha Sankaran, Mitchel S Berger, Manish K Aghi
• Interfacility neurosurgical transfers: an analysis of nontraumatic inpatient and emergency department transfers with implications for improvements in care.
  Journal of neurosurgery 2018 Safaee MM, Morshed RA, Spatz J, Sankaran S, Berger MS, Aghi MK
• Cost-effectiveness development for the postoperative care of craniotomy patients: a safe transitions pathway in neurological surgery.
  Neurosurgical focus 2018 Osorio JA, Safaee MM, Viner J, Sankaran S, Imershein S, Adigun E, Weigel G, Berger MS, McDermott MW
• An NGO-Implemented Community-Clinic Health Worker Approach to Providing Long-Term Care for Hypertension in a Remote Region of Southern India.
  Global health, science and practice 2017 Sankaran S, Ravi PS, Wu YE, Shanabogue S, Ashok S, Agnew K, Fang MC, Khanna RA, Dandu M, Harrison JD
• Changing Operating Room Culture: Implementation of a Postoperative Debrief and Improved Safety Culture.
  World neurosurgery 2017 Magill ST, Wang DD, Rutledge WC, Lau D, Berger MS, Sankaran S, Lau CY, Imershein SG
• Implementation of graphic health warning labels on tobacco products in India: the interplay between the cigarette and the bidi industries.
  Tobacco control 2014 Sankaran S, Hiilamo H, Glantz SA