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Key Facts About Our Members

Members of America’s Essential Hospitals provide state-of-the-art care to the uninsured, low-income, and other vulnerable people who might otherwise have no place to turn. In many communities, our members are the sole source of services that benefit all: trauma and burn care, neonatal intensive care, chronic condition management, health professionals training, research, public health functions and others.

Our members work daily to improve the health of individuals and promote the economic health of communities throughout the nation. The data points below come from Essential Data 2022: Our Hospitals, Our Patients.

Complex Patients

  • Essential hospitals’ patients generally are sicker and more complex than those served at other hospitals nationwide.

Committed to Underserved Communities

  • Essential hospitals provided provided 27.2 percent of all charity care nationally, or about $7.4 billion.
  • Served communities in which 15.8 million individuals live below the poverty line, 7.5 million struggle with food insecurity, and three-quarters were uninsured or covered by Medicaid or Medicare.
  • Essential hospitals continue to have lower operating margins than the rest of the hospital industry. The aggregate operating margin for members was 3.2 percent, compared with 7.7 percent for all hospitals nationwide. Without Medicaid disproportionate share hospital (DSH) payments, aggregate member operating margins would drop to negative 0.1 percent.

Community Cornerstones

  • In 2020, members of America’s Essential Hospitals provided nonemergency outpatient care to 78.8 million patients and treated 13.2 million patients in their emergency departments. They averaged more than 17,000 inpatient discharges per hospital — 2.7 times more than the inpatient volume of other acute-care hospitals nationwide.
  • Essential hospitals trained an average of 244 physicians (defined as U.S. medical and dental residents) per hospital, almost three times as many as those trained at other U.S. teaching hospitals.
  • Essential hospitals also trained 32 percent more residents than supported by federal graduate medical education (GME) funding, meaning they absorbed significant costs to meet their training mission.
  • Essential hospitals accounted for nearly a third of the nation’s level I trauma centers and 40 percent of burn care beds.
  • The average essential hospital employed 3,172 people. Together, the association’s members accounted for 739,160 jobs nationwide and contributed to $146.7 billion in economic activity.
  • Essential hospitals served communities where 7.5 million people have limited access to healthy food, 15.8 million people live below the federal poverty line, 10.8 million are uninsured, and 370,000 are homeless;

Building Healthy Communities

  • 65 percent of essential hospitals participate in a state initiative to address the social determinants of health.
  • 83 percent of essential hospitals share data with public heath departments for the purpose of population health improvement.
  • 97.6 percent of our members partner with other hospitals or health systems, or with an external federally qualified health center, community health center, or free clinic. In addition, nearly 86 percent partner with external behavioral health clinics, 70 percent have relationships with an external respite care facility

For media inquiries, contact Carl Graziano, senior director of communications, at cgraziano@essentialhospitals.org or 202.585.0102.

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