Number of Hospitals in the US

A hospital is a health care organization that is built, equipped, and staffed to deliver patient care for the sick or injured; diagnose disease and illness; provide treatment, both medical and surgical; and provide housing during the process.

Many hospitals belong to health systems where there are 2 different types, multi-hospital and single diversified. Both encompass ownership, lease, sponsorship or contract-management relationships with a central organization.

Multi-hospital systems is considered two or more hospitals, and a single diversified hospital system is one single hospital.

Hospital Facts

There are many interesting facts regarding the growth of the hospitals in the United States. By 1940, there were around 50 hospital systems recognized. All of them were religiously affiliated or not-for-profit organizations that could be traced back to a charitable individual sponsor or religious orders. 1960 started the foundation of the first investor owned system. In 1980, a survey conducted by the American Hospital Association recognized a total of 267 systems, a growth of about 217 in just 40 years.

Currently, the number of hospitals in the US stands at 6,090 total hospitals and 417 Health Systems with 2% of the systems comprising 100 or more hospitals. 4,063 or 67% hospitals are affiliated with a Health System making up 75% of all hospital beds.

Health systems can range in size from 1 to 161 hospitals and can consist of 25 to 39,825 beds with 240 systems or 58% having 1,000 or fewer hospitals beds. That being said, there are 248 systems with 1 to 5 hospitals, and of that number, 7 have 100 or more hospitals in their system.

Back in 1975, there were 1.5 million hospital beds. Today, hospitals have 919,559 total staffed hospital beds, a significantly lower number considering that there were 36.2 million total hospital admissions with 34 million of those being into Community Hospitals in 2019. 687,815 of those beds belong to health systems and 787,995 staffed beds are in Community Hospitals.

Of the 6,090 total hospitals in the U.S., 84% or 5,141 are Community Hospitals. The remainder is non-federal Psychiatric 10 % or 625; Federal Government 3% or 208; and other 2% or 116.

Total Number of Hospitals in the US: 6,090

• Community Hospitals: 5,141
• Non-Government Not-for-Profit Community Hospitals: 2,946
• Investor-Owned (For-Profit) Community Hospitals: 1,233
• State and Local Government Community Hospitals: 962
• Federal Government Hospitals: 208
• Nonfederal Psychiatric Hospitals: 625
• Other Hospitals: 116