Dive Brief:
- New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York City, with 2,259 beds, is the largest nonprofit hospital in the U.S. for 2014, according to a June 3 analysis of federal data by Becker's Hospital Review. Next came Florida Hospital in Orlando (2,242 beds), followed by Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami (1,732 beds), UPMC Presbyterian in Pittsburgh (1,583 beds), and Yale-New Haven Hospital in Connecticut (1,552 beds).
- Of the 50 largest nonprofit hospitals, several are located in Florida, including three in the top 10.
- Even "number 50," Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas, has 869 beds, according to the list.
Dive Insight:
How important are hospital bed counts? Under a federal Public Health Emergency Preparedness program (that ended a few years ago), the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality standardized definitions for various types of hospital beds so emergency responders could track bed availability in the aftermath of a public health emergency or bioterrorist attack. Aside from licensed beds, AHRQ defined physically available beds, staffed beds, unstaffed beds, occupied beds and vacant/available beds. AHRQ also drew a pie chart showing the relationships among different types of beds.
That American fixation with hospital bed counts, even for good purposes, won't sit well with administrators at the National Health Service, who cited a steady decline of hospital beds in England from 1984 to 2005. But an NHS official declared in a May 2006 interview for the British Medical Journal that fewer beds did not mean less care was being given. “We must start judging the NHS by the number of people we make better and keep well, not by the amount of beds which are, after all, only hospital furniture,” he said. “Developments in technology and changes in the way treatment is delivered mean we simply need fewer beds.”
