Derek Johnson, D.O. is the Chief Medical Executive, Experience of care for Sutter Health, where he provides strategic and operational leadership to advance patient experience across all care settings throughout the health system.  In his role, he helps bridge the gap between physicians, nursing and administrative leaders, emphasizing human connection in all settings where clinical care is provided.    

Dr. Johnson is a board-certified family medicine physician and physician leader who has been part of Sutter and Sutter East Bay Medical Group (SEBMG) since 2004. He brings more than two decades of clinical and administrative experience, with a career distinguished by operational leadership, patient experience excellence and continued dedication to frontline patient care. 

Dr. Johnson most recently served as Chief Medical Officer for SEBMG, a role he has held since 2018. In this capacity, he was responsible for the strategic and operational oversight of multiple service lines within a large, multispecialty medical group, supporting more than 400 clinicians across primary care, urgent care, adult medicine, pediatric hospital medicine, palliative care, anesthesia, and additional specialties. These services span more than 10 clinic locations and five hospitals throughout the East Bay.  Dr. Johnson has long been recognized as a champion for patient and clinician experience. Since 2014, he has served as Physician Champion for Patient Experience at SEBMG, leading service excellence initiatives and directly overseeing patient experience leaders and coaches. He has facilitated clinician communication courses across Sutter for more than a decade, including co-facilitating the Art of Communicating with Patients and serving as a core contributor to the development of Sutter’s Relationship-Centered Care course.

From 2018 to 2023, Dr. Johnson also served as a team physician for the Oakland Athletics, providing comprehensive non-orthopedic medical care to players, families and staff. Earlier in his career, Dr. Johnson held multiple leadership roles within Sutter Delta Medical Group, including Medical Director of a multispecialty group and Chair of Utilization and Quality Committees. He has also served on the SEBMG Board of Directors, including as Vice Chair, and chaired committees focused on patient experience and clinician engagement.

Dr. Johnson earned his Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine degree from Western University of Health Sciences and completed his family medicine residency at Presbyterian Intercommunity Hospital in Los Angeles. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Family Physicians and is licensed to practice medicine in California.