The US hospital system has lost more than 24,000 beds in the last 15 years as rural and urban facilities closed at the same rate, according to a new study from Harvard University.
Public health researchers found a net loss of 216 hospitals between 2010 and 2025 in a study that used data from the American Hospital Association annual survey. Their findings show that closures increased by 4% year-over-year while openings decreased 3%.
The research sheds light on a major area of concern for the country’s healthcare system following the passage of One Big Beautiful Bill Act last year, which is expected to squeeze the finances of hospitals as the number of uninsured patients rises. The law included $50 billion in relief funding specifically targeted at rural hospitals.
“Many policymakers have been treating hospital closures as a rural problem, but our data show it’s a national problem,” said Thomas Tsai, associate professor at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and one of the authors of the report.
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The research found that for-profit, small, and safety-net hospitals in socially vulnerable counties were more likely to close, and that facilities serving a high number of patients on Medicaid were rarely opened.