Providence officials this week defended plans to close the inpatient pediatrics ward at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, insisting the move followed years of open discussion even as pediatricians and county advisers accuse the hospital system of shutting down the unit over their objections.
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 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 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 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 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)
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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)
In an interview, Dr. John Aryanpur, chief medical officer of Providence Medical Group in Northern California, rejected claims that the decision was “done under the cover of night” and pushed through without meaningful input from local pediatric nurses and doctors.
“This process of discernment has been going on for about three years, so it certainly wasn’t something that was done quickly or surreptitiously,” Aryanpur said. “In my opinion, it was one of the most open and transparent processes that I’ve ever been involved in.”
Providence, which operates Santa Rosa Memorial, announced late last month that it intends to close the ward, which serves families seeking overnight hospital care. Pediatricians with Providence Medical Group estimate the inpatient unit treats about 500 patients each year. Without it, they say, roughly 300 children annually would need to be transferred to hospitals outside Sonoma County for nonemergency stays.
The closure would hit low-income families hardest, doctors and county advisers warn. The ward serves children from across Sonoma, Mendocino and Lake counties, and about 85% of Memorial’s pediatric patients are covered by Medi-Cal — which reimburses hospitals for only about 75% of care costs, among the lowest rates in the nation.
Sutter Health’s Santa Rosa hospital does not have an inpatient pediatric unit, and Kaiser Permanente, a closed integrated health system, serves a much smaller share of Medi-Cal patients locally. That leaves families on public insurance with few options close to home if Memorial stops admitting pediatric patients.
Members of the Sonoma County Maternal, Child and Adolescent Health Advisory Board blasted the plan last week and pledged to ramp up public pressure on Providence to reverse course. The county-appointed body, which advises local health officials and the Board of Supervisors, said closing the ward would result in an unacceptable level of hospital care for many low-income children.
Providence pediatricians told The Press Democrat the company has been trying to close the inpatient pediatrics wing for years. While some of those talks were open, they said, when Providence revived the issue this summer and brought it to key staff, the decision to shutter the unit had essentially already been made.
Part of a national trend
Providence is one of many hospital systems to close pediatric inpatient units in recent years, citing financial pressures and declining patient numbers.
A study published last year in the journal JAMA Pediatrics found that hospitals in the United States shut down nearly 30% of pediatric inpatient units between 2008 and 2022, while adult inpatient beds fell by just 4.4% over the same period. The researchers found that general hospitals increasingly transfer children rather than hospitalize them, concentrating pediatric inpatient care in large children’s hospitals such as UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital in Oakland.
Providence plans to convert Memorial’s pediatric wing into adult inpatient beds.
In a recent Close to Home commentary in The Press Democrat, Drs. Elizabeth Culhane and Heather Iezza, pediatricians with Providence Medical Group Santa Rosa, wrote that “decisions of such profound consequence should not rest solely on a balance sheet, nor should they be made in isolation.”
Providence says pediatrics will remain on campus
Aryanpur said Providence is not abandoning pediatric care at Santa Rosa Memorial, even if the inpatient unit closes.
He said a team of medical professionals who met to discuss the hospital’s pediatric services recommended that “pediatric hospitalist service, inpatient pediatric expertise” be maintained on campus. Pediatric care, he noted, is also delivered outside the dedicated unit — in the neonatal intensive care unit, through pediatric consultations in the emergency department and during routine newborn checks.
“We anticipate that pediatric clinicians will still be needed and necessary, and will be available at Santa Rosa Memorial, even after this change,” Aryanpur said.
He said Providence reached out to the local pediatric community, including other health care providers, and examined options to keep the inpatient program open.
“Unfortunately, as a result of that, we didn’t identify other options,” he said, adding that Providence formed a team over the summer to “evaluate how best to reconfigure pediatric care going forward.”
That group, he said, included pediatric hospitalists, outpatient pediatricians, hospital administrators, medical group representatives and others.
“It was really a very open process,” Aryanpur said. “Input from pediatricians, including our medical group pediatricians, was also solicited in this process. So I have to say, I disagree with the characterization that it was not an open process.”
Critics, however, say Providence did not aggressively pursue alternatives to closure and that the summer meetings became private and invitation-only. One person familiar with those discussions described them as “a closed-door process” guided toward a predetermined outcome.
No closure date yet, and no formal notice
Under state law, Providence must give 90 days’ notice to the California Department of Public Health before closing a facility or eliminating certain services, including a pediatric unit. The hospital also must notify the county health department and insurance companies under contract with the hospital.
State and county officials said this week that Providence has not yet submitted a formal closure notice.
Aryanpur said Providence does not yet have a closure date because it is still working through how pediatric care will be handled after the unit shuts down.
“That’s honestly why we’ve not announced a date for this closure, because a lot of these details we’re still working through,” he said. “There’s an inpatient group that’s convening currently and I’m planning to head an outpatient group to help solve some of these questions that have come up and help close the gaps, which we anticipate there will be. But these are issues that are on our radar and that we are planning to address.”
Nolan Sullivan, director of Sonoma County Health Services, said the loss of the pediatrics ward is disappointing, but noted that Providence must make decisions that keep the hospital financially sustainable and responsive to the community’s broader health needs.
Sullivan acknowledged the ward’s low census and utilization, saying that made its continued operation unsustainable over the long term.
“The county’s role, however, is not to oversee Providence’s operations but to advocate for solutions that minimize the impact on families and help close the service gap through collaboration,” he said.
That collaboration, he said, could include advocating for regional pediatric partnerships so children who need hospitalization can be transferred quickly and safely; expanding pediatric telehealth and urgent care capacity in Sonoma County to reduce unnecessary transfers; and supporting local providers and community clinics in coordinating outpatient and follow-up care.
Other possible efforts, Sullivan said, could involve working with state and local agencies to identify long-term funding for pediatric specialty services in rural or underserved regions, and helping families with transportation and lodging when children must be hospitalized outside the county.
You can reach Staff Writer Martin Espinoza at 707-521-5213 or martin.espinoza@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @pressreno.