Providence Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital closed its inpatient pediatric unit on Friday, adding a new hurdle for Sonoma County parents who may now need to drive their children farther for overnight hospital care.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The hospital was forced to shutter the unit and convert it into adult inpatient care because of budget constraints and President Donald Trump\u2019s cuts to Medicaid,<\/a> according to Dr. Eric Hodes, chief medical officer at Providence Sonoma County. Hodes said the pediatric unit has also seen fewer patients compared with adult units.<\/p>\n \u201cThis decision was not made lightly or in haste,\u201d Hodes said in an email this week.<\/p>\n The hospital\u2019s emergency department will still see pediatric patients, but children needing nonemergency overnight care\u00a0will now be transferred more than 50 miles south to\u00a0UCSF Benioff Children\u2019s Hospital,<\/a> according to Dr. Hodes. He said patients may also be transferred to other regional hospitals, such as UC Davis Children\u2019s Hospital and Lucile Packard Children\u2019s Hospital Stanford.<\/p>\n Kaiser Permanente<\/a> Santa Rosa Medical Center is now the closest option for nonemergency overnight pediatric care, according to the Santa Rosa Press Democrat<\/a>. Dr. Milana PeBenito, a local family medicine physician, told the paper she was concerned some families wouldn\u2019t go to Kaiser because \u201cthe community has the impression that if you\u2019re not a Kaiser member you can\u2019t go there.\u201d Kaiser told the outlet, \u201cOur emergency departments are open to all.\u201d<\/p>\n Memorial Hospital\u2019s closure comes as hospitals across the country shutter pediatric units, with a 26.6% drop in units between 2008 and 2022, according to a JAMA Pediatrics study<\/a>. Only 4.4% of adult inpatient units closed during that period. Pediatric inpatient unit closures were more acute in rural areas, soaring above 50% during that same time period.<\/p>\n The study said that the pandemic was partially to blame for the closures but also suggested that hospitals are removing pediatric beds because adult beds generate more revenue.\u00a0Hodes did not answer SFGATE\u2019s question on whether adult beds were more profitable at Memorial Hospital but said that the eight-bed pediatric unit averages less than two patients per day and that maintaining a \u201cnear-empty\u201d unit has become increasingly difficult for the not-for-profit hospital. On Monday, two patients were being cared for at the inpatient pediatric unit,\u00a0Hodes said.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a very low daily census,\u201d Hodes said. \u201cRepurposing the underutilized pediatric beds to increase vital capacity for adults who are most at risk for hospitalization will support our regional level II trauma center \u2026 and other complex clinical services.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Pediatric unit closures could quicken after Trump signed a law last year that cuts nearly $1 trillion<\/a> from Medicaid over 10 years in order to extend tax breaks. Children make up about half of Medicaid enrollees, according to KFF Health News<\/a>. Hodes said Trump\u2019s cuts will make running a hospital \u201ceven more challenging \u2014 requiring health systems like Providence to find new ways to meet the greatest needs with limited resources.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Memorial\u2019s unit shift comes as it faces financial pressure. According to the Press Democrat, the hospital has been losing money for three years, including spending $84.7 million more than its revenue between 2024 and 2025.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Providence Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital closed its inpatient pediatric unit on Friday, adding a new hurdle for Sonoma…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":548571,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[97,252,253,243150],"class_list":["post-548570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health-care","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare","tag-sfgnews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=548570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548570\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/548571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}