photo credit: Providence
Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital is owned and operated by Providence, a ministry of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange,

"We had obviously been hearing rumors about this, and there had been mentions [of the closing] in town hall meetings that we attend as nurses, who also work at the hospital, in addition to representing nurses at Staff Nurses Association,” said Rosalyn Hart, an ICU nurse and VP of Memorial's nurses union.

According to reporting in the Press Democrat, the 8 bed in-patient pediatric care unit was one of only two dedicated pediatric wards in Sonoma County; the other being Kaiser Medical Center in Santa Rosa.

Hart says layoffs are not guaranteed, but are a major concern for the pediatric care nurses.

The patients that we treat are all non-key pediatric patients, and not just in Sonoma County, but we get children from Lake County and Mendocino County,” Hart said. :So anybody who's not a part of the Kaiser system comes to us. So all of these families north of us are now all gonna have to go down even further to San Francisco.”

Hart says the Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital Staff Nurses Association believes a dozen members are affected by the closure.

Providence says 13 caregivers and more than 4 physician roles are affected. 

Providence says children in need of emergency care will still be seen at the hospital. And that children who need long-term hospital care will continue to be transferred to UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital in San Francisco. 

Hart says the closure is a concern for pediatric patients outside Sonoma County as well.

"They have said that there are open positions in the hospital that these nurses can't apply to, and that's where the negotiating needs to come into play because the positions that are open are obviously not pediatric nurse positions, so there's a great deal of training in education and whether the nurses even want to go into whatever positions are open,” Hart said. 

The closure is expected in the first quarter of 2026.