Less than two weeks from now, Providence Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, Sonoma County’s largest hospital, will stop admitting patients at its inpatient pediatric ward, marking the beginning of the planned end for that unique care unit. When the beds there are empty, the county will have only one hospital, Kaiser Permanente, where parents can take their children for local, non-emergency overnight care.
Providence officials say the move is part of a necessary reallocation of resources. Maintaining the underused pediatrics ward, while demand for adult inpatient care continues to grow, they say, is no longer economically feasible.
Dr. Eric Hodes, chief medical officer for Providence Sonoma County, said his team is in the process of trying to figure out how to best use the eight-bed space going forward.
“We’re still determining what the best fit for those rooms will be, whether there’ll be post-op patients, trauma patients, postpartum patients after labor and delivery,” he said in an interview Thursday, March 12. “That’s all being worked through.”
Hodes said the average daily census in the pediatric unit is 1.94 patients, where 60% stayed for less than 48 hours.
He said the majority of pediatric patients treated in Memorial’s emergency department, 91%, are discharged home, not admitted or transferred to other hospitals.
In 2025, of the hospital’s 7,336 pediatric patients treated in the emergency department, 229 were transferred to a Bay Area facility that could provide a higher level of care, usually UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital in San Francisco and Oakland.
But last year, 412 kids were admitted at the Santa Rosa hospital’s pediatric unit. Hodes said most of those came through the emergency department.
The last patients will be admitted March 27.
Financial strain
The closure comes at a time when hospitals are struggling due to rising costs and low reimbursement rates. In California, 44% of hospitals are operating at a loss and about 1 in 10 are at risk of closure, according to the Hospital Council of Northern & Central California.
Last year, 22 California hospitals shut down their maternity wards; Providence closed its maternity ward at Petaluma Valley Hospital in 2023. Twelve counties in the state do not have any maternity services, Meghan Hardin, regional vice president of the state hospital council, said during a March 10 health care town hall organized by state and federal lawmakers in Santa Rosa.
For the past three years, Memorial Hospital has had negative operating margins, a key profitability ratio that measures net income from operations divided by total revenue. The hospital’s operating expenses exceeded its net patient and other operating revenue by $56.8 million, $42.3 million and $84.7 million, during the 2022-23, 2023-24 and 2024-25 fiscal years, respectively.
The hospital’s financial pressures are likely to multiply next year, when $1 trillion in federal cuts over 10 years to Medicaid kick in under President Donald Trump’s tax cut and spending bill, which was signed into law last summer.
For Providence, which operates 17 hospitals in California, the estimated statewide losses from those cuts are projected to be $347 million to $381 million from 2027 to 2034, the provider said.
Dr. John Aryanpur, chief medical officer of Providence Medical Group Northern California, explained the decision to close the inpatient pediatric wing at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital Wed., Nov. 12, 2025 in Santa Rosa. (John Burgess / The Press Democrat)
Dr. John Aryanpur, chief medical officer of Providence Medical Group in Northern California, said the coming years are going to be extremely challenging for all health care organizations.
“But particularly those like ours that serve disproportionately rural communities and that serve the under advantaged in our communities,” Aryanpur said.
Altered landscape of care
Providence said closure of its pediatrics ward does not mean a complete withdrawal of pediatric care. For the majority of pediatric patients, there will be no changes, the health care provider said.
Providence said the hospital’s emergency department will continue to provide pediatric care and pediatricians will be on staff for patients admitted to the emergency department. The hospital’s labor and delivery unit and neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) will be locally staffed and led by UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital neonatologists.
But Dr. Milana PeBenito, a local family medicine physician, said the impact on hundreds of families will be significant. PeBenito, a member of Sonoma County’s Maternal Child, Adolescent Health Advisory Board, has been critical of Providence’s closure plans since late last summer, when news of potential closure started spreading among hospital staff.
At the time, PeBenito pointed out that 85% of the more than 400 pediatric admissions last year were children who were covered by Medi-Cal, the state’s version of the Medicaid health coverage program for low-income people.
During a recent meeting of the advisory panel, PeBenito once again raised concerns about the loss of Providence’s pediatric ward, warning that Sonoma County is now left with only Kaiser Permanente Santa Rosa Medical Center, which is primarily a closed-network system for its members.
PeBenito pointed out that under the federal 1986 Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, or EMTALA, hospitals participating in Medicare must provide emergency care to anyone seeking it.
“I can take them to Kaiser, because of EMTALA, Kaiser has to triage and treat them, and if they need to be admitted, they have to take care of them, even if they’re not Kaiser members,” PeBenito said, during an interview after the advisory board meeting.
“Now, Kaiser is the last one standing in terms of pediatric inpatient care, and the community has the impression that if you’re not a Kaiser member you can’t go there,” she said.
Asked about PeBenito’s comments regarding possible access to Kaiser’s inpatient pediatrics ward, a Kaiser representative said in an email, “our emergency departments are open to all.”
Kaiser Permanente Santa Rosa Medical Center (Courtesy Kaiser Permanente)
“We focus on supporting families from pregnancy through adolescence and being a trusted partner in their care over time,” Dr. Trish Hiserote, physician in chief at Kaiser Permanente Santa Rosa, said in an email.
She said Kaiser’s 428 physicians and other clinicians work closely across all specialties, including pediatrics, to deliver “coordinated, high‑quality care.”
“We will continue to focus on ensuring children receive timely, appropriate care in settings designed to meet their needs,” she said.
Nevertheless, Hodes, the Providence chief medical officer, emphasized the financial strain now weighing on Memorial Hospital, like so many others. Memorial can’t provide “all levels of service to every single service line” because of those mounting pressures, he said.
Hodes noted the national movement toward “centralization of pediatric care,” where pediatric specialists are concentrated in facilities such as UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital and UC Davis Children’s Hospital.
“Our community is not unique in that respect, and so we’re following national trends,” he said, acknowledging the trend could be “challenging” for families who do not live near those facilities.
“On the other hand, the concentration of care provides expertise in those centers,” he said.
However, Dr. Deborah Britt, a pediatrician with Providence Medical Group, pushed back on any claims that consolidation of inpatient pediatric care is a positive thing rather than a loss for communities.
Britt said they’re closing the pediatric ward for financial reasons. “Any other explanation is just a made-up excuse to soften a predetermined decision,” she said.
Britt, who has been a local pediatrician for more than three decades, said Providence’s inpatient pediatric ward has averaged about 500 patients annually over the past decade.
Britt, who is mostly retired but still works on a per-diem basis, said pediatricians in her office have been fielding concerns from parents with private insurance who are contemplating switching to Kaiser, which in many cases is more affordable. In the past, they’ve kept their private insurance because they want to keep their Providence pediatricians, she said.
“In my office, there have been a number of parents who said that,” Britt said, referring to those considering switching to Kaiser. “It remains to be seen if that’s what they do.”
Dr. John Aryanpur, chief medical officer of Providence Medical Group Northern California, explained the decision to close the inpatient pediatric wing at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital Wed., Nov. 12, 2025 in Santa Rosa. (John Burgess / The Press Democrat)
Aryanpur, the Providence Medical Group chief medical officer, said local parents considering a change of providers given Providence’s pullback should know that despite the inpatient ward closure, the hospital operator is committed to continue providing pediatric care.
“To that parent who’s concerned about that, I would reassure them, we’re going to provide care for your kids when they come to our emergency room,” Aryanpur said. “We’re going to arrange for excellent care for you at UCSF … We don’t want you to not come to our emergency room feeling that you won’t get care, because we still have the capacity to care for pediatric kids and to arrange for care.”
You can reach Staff Writer Martin Espinoza at 707-521-5213 or martin.espinoza@pressdemocrat.com.