Hospitals Near Me

Are you sick and needing to see a doctor? Did you get hurt? Are you new in town and just want to get yourself oriented? Well, there are many reasons to visit a hospital but most people generally try to avoid seeing doctors.

If you do need to go to one, simply check out the Hospitals Near You Map below. It will show you the locations of all the nearby hospitals. Click on one of the locations and you will have the hospital name, phone number, hours of operations if they have them, and their website. You can also see reviews and comments from past patients and with a few clicks, you will have directions to get there as quickly as possible.

Hospitals Near Me – Find it on the Map

Hospitals Near Me – Hospitals Trivia

Hours of Operation

Hospitals have staff on site, 24 hours a day; however, different departments within a hospital may be open only certain hours and staffing levels vary between different times of the day. Regardless, American hospitals generally have at the very least an emergency room that is open at all times. Due to the reduced hours during the evening and nights, the wait times may be a bit longer and patients who are in need of critical care get higher priority.

The Bellvue Hospital is the oldest hospital in the United States. It is almost 300 years old.

Important Information for Foreign Travelers

If you are not an American citizen and not familiar with their health care system, before going to the hospital remember that it is not free. In fact, it may be a bit pricy for those who aren’t citizens. So, be sure to have travel insurance prior to traveling to the United States. This includes all visits to clinics and emergency rooms. Even if you are a student working in the United States or a foreign worker working in the country, be sure to arrange insurance through your school, employer or some other means. Just be warned, most forms of travel insurance do not cover pre-existing conditions. Therefore, you will want to be extra careful about finding a plan that will cover conditions you may have, or just keep yourself extra safe if you have an existing condition.

A History of American Hospitals

Up until the 19th century, the United States was a very rural country and the concept of a centralized public hospital was not one that was needed in most parts of the country. If you needed the doctor, they would generally come and visit you at your home or if need be, you or one of your family members would go to theirs and hope he was home.

However, the few of the larger centers did start to develop hospitals earlier. In New York, the start of a hospital started in 1736 when a six-bed ward was created in what would later become the Bellevue Hospital, making it both the oldest and first hospital in the United States.

During the 60 years following the Civil War, several massive changes to both the country and the health care profession brought about the conditions of opening hospitals. Firstly, you have a large amount of economic growth and the start of the second industrial revolution. Secondly, you have a number of trained surgeons and nurses from the war. Thirdly, there was massive immigration and urbanization available. Finally, with the discovery of germ theory, sterilization and anesthesia, the ability for surgeons to be more successful proved that more and better treatments were possible. From here, a large number of hospitals started to spring up across the country, allowing for centralized public health care and in addition, a place for more rapid development of medical science to be able to be done.

Thanks to these changes, you should be able to find something close by when you search Hospitals Near Me.

Hospitals Near Me – Hospitals Facts

Facts About American Hospitals

1. There are a lot of hospitals. In the United States, most major communities have at least one hospital in them and in total, there are over 5,600 hospitals across the country. Most of these hospitals are community hospitals, meaning they will serve the general public. Of the total hospitals, more than 1,000 are for profit hospitals, working to make money for their investors.

2. How many beds are there? Well, in total, there are a little over 900,000 beds. Meaning that on average you have about 160 beds for patients. Some patients only stay a few hours in the emergency area, while others are there for days or even longer depending on their condition and other factors.

3. A lot of people end up in the emergency room and hospitals in general. Each year the emergency rooms see about 118 million people (1 in three people in the United States) and from those people 35 million people are admitted to the hospital to enjoy one of those 900,000 beds.

4. People also go to hospitals to have babies. Each year, about 4 million babies are born in American Hospitals each year. The hospital is the most common place for babies to be born.

5. Hospitals make a lot of job. Really a lot. They are the second largest private employer in the entire country, the only one bigger is restaurants. They directly employ 5 million people, between doctors, nurses, specialists, administration, cleaners and so forth. In addition, the purchases that hospitals make for food, supplies and so forth support one in ten jobs across the country. Health care is huge.

6. Hospitals are expensive to run. One in Three hospitals lose money in their operation. This is partly due to free services offered and also due to unpaid bills. Annually, $31 billion in health care services go unpaid for. This is with a general decrease in operating budget that has happened over the last several years.

7. Due to a lack of staff and funding hospitals face the problem of being over capacity. 47% of all hospitals reported being over capacity in 2007. This causes a lot of trouble, especially ambulance drivers and patients who may get turned away due to the inability to handle more patients. Currently, there is a national shortage of over 119,000 registered nursing positions and it is expected that number will reach a million by 2020. If you are looking for a new career, there is likely very steady work, with lots of overtime available, for future nurses. So, you may want to check if the hospital you find when searching Hospitals Near Me has a wait time for their emergency room available.