10 hospitals closing departments or ending services

A number of healthcare organizations have recently closed medical departments or ended services at facilities to shore up finances, focus on more in-demand services or address staffing shortages.

Here are 10 department closures or services that are ending or have been announced, advanced or finalized that Becker’s reported since July 1: 

1. Aurora Medical Center-Sheboygan County in Wisconsin plans to stop offering inpatient psychiatric care and convert those beds to medical and surgical beds beginning Sept. 19. Aurora Health Care attributed the decision to increased demand for medical and surgical inpatient beds and a decline in psychiatric patient volume. 

2. Cleveland-based MetroHealth will close six outpatient offices on Oct. 3 to improve operational efficiency and stabilize its finances. The system said services offered at the affected sites will be consolidated to larger locations and enable it to expand services and hours of operation. 

3. Sacramento-based Sutter Health plans to close its Jackson, Calif.-based Sutter Amador Surgery Center on Oct. 3. In an open letter to the community, the system said the outpatient surgery center closure will help “align resources with areas of growing need” in the community it serves.

4. Providence Seaside (Ore.) Hospital plans to close its inpatient obstetric and newborn care services, effective Oct. 4. Hospital leaders said the service closure comes at a time of “historic reset” for Oregon’s healthcare system, with hospitals across the state forced to deal with care costs outpacing reimbursement due to challenges like workforce shortages, rising supply costs and inflation. 

5. Jackson South Medical Center, part of Jackson Health System, both in Miami, moved up the closure of its maternity unit to Aug. 15. The hospital originally planned to close the unit this fall, but the closure was accelerated due to ongoing staffing issues, including nurses transferring to other positions and frequent callouts.

6. Memorial Hospital Biloxi (Miss.) will end its obstetrics services and transfer them to Memorial Hospital Gulfport (Miss.) on Sept. 1. The hospitals are part of Memorial Hospital System in Gulfport. Obstetrics services being consolidated include labor and delivery, nursery and mother and baby. 

7. Minneapolis-based Allina Health plans to close four clinics — three suburban medical clinics and one on Nicollet Mall in downtown Minneapolis — on Nov. 1. The system said there is underutilized space across the organization’s clinics, and the closures balance maintaining care access with greater efficiency of space and resources.

8. Kansas City, Mo.-based Research Medical Center, part of Nashville, Tenn.-based HCA Healthcare’s HCA Midwest Health, will close its neonatal ICU and end labor and delivery services on Sept. 8. A review found that the hospital has seen a more than 80% decrease in community use of both the NICU and labor and delivery services. Research Medical is reinvesting in areas that have seen an increased demand, including burn and organ transplant care, cardiology, emergency and trauma and neurosciences.  

9. Thousand Oaks, Calif.-based Los Robles Regional Medical Center closed its pediatric unit July 1. Hospital officials attributed the 12-bed unit’s closure to a significant decrease in pediatric volume. They reported the unit averaged fewer than two patients per day.

10. McCook, Neb.-based Community Hospital shared plans to close its Curtis (Neb.) Medical Center — a rural health clinic — citing future Medicaid cuts. 

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