Providence announced Tuesday it will be closing its pediatric intensive care unit, or PICU, at St. Vincent Medical Center.

It’s the latest in a series of layoffs and service cuts Providence has made this year in an effort to stem a $100 million operating loss across its Oregon hospitals.

The St. Vincent PICU opened in 2013, and provides care for children from newborns to teenagers. With four beds, the St. Vincent unit is the smallest of the three ICUs in Oregon dedicated to children. The other PICUs are at Legacy Health’s Randall Children’s Hospital and OHSU’s Doernbecher Children’s Hospital.

Ray Moreno, chief executive of Providence Oregon’s West service area, said Doernbecher and Randall have the capacity to care for St. Vincent’s patients when the closure takes place.

“I’m really grateful for that and we’re going to work with them on what’s next,” he said.

According to Moreno, when Providence opened the PICU, it believed that population growth on the west side justified the expansion. In recent years, however, the PICU hasn’t served enough patients. In 2024, it was empty for 155 days, and typically had just one patient when it wasn’t empty.

ICUs are staffing intensive because they require nurses and physicians to be available around the clock. Last year, the unit operated at a $3 million loss.

In the current fiscal environment, Moreno said, it isn’t possible to continue to run units with low patient volume and duplicative services.

“There are other folks in the community who do this at a greater scale than we do. That’s how we got to this point,” he said.

The closure will mean the unit’s staff of 20 nurses and three physicians will lose their jobs. Providence said it hopes to find other positions within the organization for those being laid off, and it will work with the Oregon Nurses Association, the union representing nurses, on what comes next.

At present, Providence is only cutting its four-bed PICU and will continue all of its other services for children at St Vincent, Moreno said. Those include St. Vincent’s inpatient pediatric unit, specialized surgical services and a children’s emergency room. Providence St. Vincent’s neonatal intensive care unit also will continue. St. Vincent delivers more babies than any other hospital in the state.

Moreno, who oversees St. Vincent and Providence Seaside, said he anticipates another hard year for the company and he’s still evaluating whether additional cuts will be necessary.

“We’re working really hard to keep any changes or cuts away from where patients are cared for as much as possible. We’re trying to be thoughtful, good stewards of our resources,” he said.

Pediatric services are often among the first cuts when hospitals face financial headwinds. Children make up a smaller percentage of the overall population and need hospital services less often than adults, so many services dedicated to children run at less than full capacity and lose money.

Providence announced last month it is ending labor and delivery services at its Seaside hospital. Elsewhere in the West, Providence closed an inpatient psychiatric unit for children in Spokane last year and is reportedly considering closing the inpatient pediatric wing of a hospital in Santa Rosa, California.

From 2008 to 2022, U.S. hospitals closed nearly 30% of pediatric inpatient units, according to research from Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2025/09/16/providence-st-vincent-pediatric-icu-close/