7/12/2023
There are a total of 7,308 active healthcare facilities in the United States that are either independently operated or government run.
If you have a medical emergency and need to find a hospital or medical clinic near your location, we show you several ways to find out which health centers are near you, as well as how to get to them and their patient service phone numbers.
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Hospitals near me
Larger health centers with 24-hour emergency service, a minimum number of patient beds, and primary and specialty care services are called hospitals for the vast majority of health areas.
In this map you can locate the hospitals near your current location and how to get to them:
Medical clinics near me
When we talk about medical clinics, we usually refer to health centers that are smaller than hospitals, with smaller services, sometimes even without an emergency area and with limited opening hours.
There are clinics specialized in certain pathologies and others that focus on primary care. See the clinics near you on this map:
County Health System Medical Centers
In the United States, especially in the most populated areas of the country, it is common that the county government is responsible for managing and administering several hospitals and medical centers to provide health coverage to the inhabitants of the area.
Thus, one way to find health clinics in your area is through the website of the county health system, which usually offers a list with the location of the centers they manage.
Here are links to lists of hospitals and medical clinics in some of the most populated counties in the United States:
What types of hospitals and medical clinics are there in the USA?
Before moving on to the classification that includes the types of hospitals and medical clinics in the United States, it seems appropriate to clarify something first. We can say that there is more than one typology and, depending on a public or private administration, health centers are often categorized according to the kind of care they offer.
With this in mind, we will define them as follows:
Local/State and Federal.
There are a number of government-run medical clinics and hospitals in the United States, such as those linked to the Veterans Administration. In this category we also include health centers run by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Department of Defense. There are currently 207 federal hospitals/clinics.
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Some of these sanatoriums are run by local or state authorities. Often, these health centers include an educational service affiliated with an academic institution. There are 951 community hospitals in the United States, but there are fewer and fewer due to pressure from private companies.
Rural and urban
The geographic location of hospitals and medical clinics can determine demographics, size, services, employees and more. Urban health centers (65%) serve more populated areas and compete with others. These can include 100 to 500 beds and vary in size.
On the other hand, rural hospitals are smaller, having 100 beds or less, are located on the periphery of metropolitan areas and have smaller budgets.
These health centers receive a majority of uninsured Medicare/Medicaid patients and are often designated as Critical Access Hospitals (CAH) by CMS.
These Critical Access Hospitals typically have fewer than 25 beds, are located 35 miles (55 km) from another sanatorium, and make up 75% of rural sanatoriums.
Rural and urban facilities may be categorized as 'safety net hospitals' by CMS based on the charity cases they possess. For now, these sanatoriums receive additional funding to cover those costs.
Community and non-community medical centers
According to the American Hospital Association, a community health center is any facility that is not federally chartered. However, the health organizations that routinely rate them consider them to be non-educational sanatoriums. Some raters even define them as freestanding with local demographics.
In this sense, the basic definition of these facilities says that they are hospitals that serve a particular community, are managed by local leaders and offer financial opportunities for the economy where it is. These health centers can also be urban or rural.
For-profit or not-for-profit
Financial dynamics have driven the purchase of health centers by investors and whose profits go to shareholders. However, 76% of community health centers are not-for-profit organizations, so any additional money is reinvested.
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These types of medical clinics and hospitals are evaluated under the same metrics and, regardless of category, most studies show that the quality of care varies equally in both cases. This means that there are for-profit sanatoriums that have high/low scores and not-for-profit facilities with the same ratings.
While some for-profit facilities focus on offering certain services to generate more profit, others adopt efficient policies to lower costs. Overall, there is no research indicating that one or the other provides a better experience for patients.
Independent of the system and/or a network
Mergers between institutions are increasing within the healthcare industry. This means that more hospitals are now part of a system with a central headquarters. These healthcare networks may include a main hospital and several specialized divisions or several sanatoriums with independent offshoots.
Similarly, there are healthcare networks that do not belong to the established system. These are a collection of facilities, doctors, agencies and other services that function in a coordinated manner. The members of these networks are managed independently, but work together for the benefit of the community.
Educational and non-educational health centers
Finally, hospitals/clinics associated with a medical school are designated as educational. This affiliation may function as an organizational integration or shared administration, although crucially it serves to train medical students, residents and interns.
Many academic institutions comply with ongoing clinical trials and research that provide access to new treatments. It is important to note that many of these health centers serve large numbers of Medicare/Medicaid and uninsured patients. In addition to adding charity costs, they earn low quality scores for caring for more sensitive patients.
Español: Hospitales y clínicas médicas cerca de mi ubicación