Phil and Penny Knight have committed $1.1 billion to support women's health care and cardiovascular care in Portland. The Nike co-founder and his wife have committed the massive sum to Providence St. Vincent Medical Center and Providence Heart Institute, supporting a planned women's hospital as well as cardiovascular care at the institute.
A New Kind of Hospital on the St. Vincent Campus
The commitment was announced this month, according to a Providence news release, which states plainly that “Phil and Penny Knight have committed $1.1 billion to Providence St. Vincent Medical Center and to Providence Heart Institute.” As Healthcare Design Magazine reports, Providence St. Vincent Medical Center is already regarded as one of Oregon's largest hospitals, making it a natural anchor point for the ambitious new project. Per Portland Tribune, the gift will support plans to build a women's health hospital on the St. Vincent campus.
The release states the new facility will create Oregon's first hospital dedicated to women's health, located at Providence St. Vincent Medical Center and integrated across the broader campus. The planned hospital is expected to bring together gynecology, pregnancy, labor and delivery, menopause care and cardiovascular services under one roof, according to the Providence St. Vincent Foundation's announcement of the Knight Fund.
NICU Upgrade and Hundreds of New Jobs
Beyond consolidating women's specialty care, the project will also feature a modernized neonatal intensive care unit, the release notes. Once completed, the hospital is expected to support the creation of hundreds of new clinical and non-clinical positions, according to the same Providence announcement.
The timing lines up with a shift Providence says it's seeing in patient needs. The health system notes that hospitals nationally are treating a growing number of pregnant patients who are also managing chronic health conditions, including hypertension, diabetes, behavioral health conditions and substance-use disorders — a trend cited as part of the rationale for building more comprehensive, integrated maternal care.
The Knights' Long History With Providence Heart Institute
This isn't the Knights' first major investment in Providence's cardiac care. Over the past decade, the couple has already contributed $200 million to Providence Heart Institute, which sees close to 63,000 patients annually from across the Pacific Northwest, the release states. The new $1.1 billion commitment is also expected to support cardiac imaging, clinical trials and physician recruitment at the institute.
Providence St. Vincent Medical Center itself is a 539-bed, not-for-profit hospital in Portland founded in 1875, giving the planned women's hospital a long-established institutional home. The project's total construction budget, timeline and physical scale have not been detailed in the announcements so far.
What a Comparable Project Looked Like Elsewhere
Other health systems have recently pursued similar builds. In Indianapolis, Ascension St. Vincent opened a 268,000-square-foot Women and Infants Hospital on its main campus in late 2024, according to Healthcare Design Magazine. That $200 million, eight-story facility included a Level IV neonatal intensive care unit, 109 private NICU rooms, six couplet care rooms and 30 maternity suites, along with expanded maternal services, two rooftop helipads and a pediatric emergency department. It offers a glimpse of the scale such projects can reach, though Providence has not released comparable specifics for its own Portland plans.
