How far is the nearest hospital?

This figure

Method

• Drive times. Real road routes from the center of every 2020 census tract in the lower 48 states and DC to the nearest hospital, weighted by where people live. They are routed on a major-roads network (motorways through tertiary roads) at free-flow speeds with no traffic, so they run short: about 1.5 to 2.5 minutes shorter than a full road network in Missouri tests, and more in mountains and on islands. Alaska and Hawaii have no drive-time figures yet and show as no figures.
• Hospitals. Emergency-capable means an acute care, critical access or rural emergency hospital that reports emergency services. Any acute or critical access means acute care and critical access hospitals, with or without an emergency department. VA, military, psychiatric, children's and other specialty hospitals are left out. Some rural hospitals are placed at their ZIP code center, a few miles off.
• Hospital catchments. Select a hospital on a state map to see the counties it serves: the counties holding census tracts for which it is the nearest hospital by road, with the people in those tracts and their average and longest drive.
• Conditions. CDC PLACES model-based estimates for adults. Age-adjusted figures compare places with different age mixes; crude figures are the actual share. Small counties are noisy. Kentucky and Pennsylvania counties use the 2024 release, and chronic kidney disease the 2023 release.
• Rurality. USDA ERS Rural-Urban Continuum Codes 2023: 1 to 3 are metro counties, 4 to 9 nonmetro, and a state's figure is the share of its people living in nonmetro counties.
• Connecticut. The map uses Connecticut's eight legacy counties. Hospital and drive-time figures are native to them; the other figures are derived from the nine planning regions and are approximate.
• State and national figures. Rates and averages weight county values by 2020 population; counts are added up. A dash or a hatched area means no figure; the map never fills a gap with a guess.

Sources