Locations of Rural and Urban Hospitals

This map shows the locations of all short-term acute care hospitals that were operating in 2025, both in rural and urban areas. It also shows the locations of (1) hospitals that have closed in rural areas since 2005 and (2) selected closed hospitals that were located in areas classified as urban but that served large rural populations.

The financial data shown for each hospital are from the Medicare Cost Report filed in the most recent fiscal year available as of April 2025. Explanations of the variables for each hospital are provided below.

Rural vs Urban. A hospital is classified here as “rural” if it is located in a rural community that meets the criteria established by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA). (Different definitions of “rural” are used by other federal agencies and some states.) Under the HRSA definition, a community is rural if it is either:

Type indicates the method Medicare used to pay the hospital in the most recent fiscal year.

Total Expenses shows the total annual expenses incurred by the hospital, based on the most recent Medicare Cost Report available. This is a better way of assessing the relative size of the hospital than the number of inpatient beds, since annual expenses includes both the hospital’s inpatient and outpatient services.

The Patient Services Margin represents the profit or loss from revenues and costs associated with health care services delivered to patients, based on the most recent Medicare Cost Report available.

The Total Margin includes all revenues and costs in the most recent year, including those that are not directly tied to patient care as well as revenues and expenses on patient services.

Many hospitals have a positive total margin despite incurring losses on patient services because they receive revenues from investments, other businesses, local tax revenues, state grants, or federal grants that offset the losses. If these other sources of revenue were to decrease or be terminated, the hospital might no longer have revenues sufficient to cover its costs.

The data shown on the map are also available in a searchable tabular form in Data on Rural and Urban Hospitals.

Information on margins in earlier years for rural hospitals are shown in the tables on Size and Financial Status of Rural Hospitals and Trend in Rural Hospital Margins.

Additional details on the methodology used to calculate the margins are available in the Methodology section.