NeilMed owners donate $5 million toward imaging center near Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital
Dr. Ketan C. Mehta and his wife, Nina, co-founders of NeilMed Pharmaceuticals, have donated $5 million to help build out a new imaging department at the Hansel Family Care Center, the four-story medical office building under development across the street from Providence Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital.
The gift covers about a quarter of the cost of the roughly $20 million newly-named Mehta Family Imaging Center and will likely help purchase state-of-the-art diagnostic equipment. The new facility will eliminate the need for Providence patients to travel to other locations, including UCSF or Stanford, for those services, said Nina Mehta.
She said she's used the existing imaging services at the nearby Providence Medical Group medical facility at 121 Sotoyome St. for mammograms and other medical needs. Some of the technology not presently available at that facility, including new cardiac imaging equipment, will now be available for patients, opening up new local care, especially for those who are elderly and disabled.
"It's really going to make (the hospital) such a big hub and we're really proud … to be part of that," Nina Mehta said. She and her husband have been living in Sonoma County for almost four decades, with two of their three children born at Memorial Hospital.
Dr. Mehta, who started his medical career at Memorial in the late 1980s as a pulmonary and critical care specialist, said the new imaging facility will allow Providence Medical Group physicians to take advantage of new AI imaging technologies that allow for improved and faster diagnostics that can be coupled with less invasive surgical procedures.
Dr. Mehta said the gift was a way of giving back to the local community, which has been both a home for his family and the base of his successful business. The Mehtas' company, started in Santa Rosa in 2000, now has dozens of products sold worldwide, including its signature Sinus Rinse and Neti Pot devices.
As a privately held company, NeilMed does not disclose its financial revenues. But Dr. Mehta described his company as an "upper mid-market company" with about 600 employees nationwide. The company has about 400 employees in Sonoma County.
While the company has expanded its manufacturing capacity to other states, including Michigan and New Jersey, Dr. Mehta pointed out that unlike other major, local companies, NeilMed has not relocated its Santa Rosa facilities and has no immediate plans to do so. He said that is another reflection of the couple's commitment to the local community.
"Even though the cost of operation in California and everything is so high, we plan to stay here for now, and we've been here for 26 years," he said, adding that the company recently obtained a permit to expand the current footprint at its Santa Rosa headquarters near the Sonoma County Airport.
The Mehtas' donation brings Providence Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital Foundation very near its philanthropic goal of raising $25 million for the completion of the Hansel Family Care Center medical office building. The total projected cost of that facility is $42 million, with the cost of the imaging center comprising nearly half that price tag.
The foundation's fundraising campaign for the project started a year ago, with a $10 million donation from Marilyn and Henry Hansel and a subsequent $5 million donation from Santa Rosa philanthropist Norma Person, in memory of her husband Evert, the former Press Democrat publisher. The $5 million gift from the Mehtas brings the foundation's fundraising total for the medical office building to $21 million.
Two of the floors of that building, the second and third, have been completed and serving tens of thousands of patients a year, said Rebecca Kendall, chief philanthropy officer for the foundation.
Kendall said the second floor, completed in 2020, features a primary care center with robust psychiatric and behavioral health services, while the third floor, completed that same year, features a multispecialty center that includes orthopedics, neurology, a trauma surgery clinic and other services.
The first and fourth floors, currently "shelled space," will feature, respectively, the imaging center and the new Dr. John B. Reed Center for Cardiac Care.
You can reach Staff Writer Martin Espinoza at 707-521-5213 or martin.espinoza@pressdemocrat.com.
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This story was originally published May 31, 2026 at 1:01 PM.