What is considered a large hospital??

Jenni811, RN · Nov 7, 2011

who knows? we are a 330 bed hospital. i guess i'd consider us medium sized compared to most places. but i'm from the midwest and i think it is considered very large in our area. Majority of the hospitals here are like 25, maybe 50 beds at most.

mct1963 · Feb 8, 2013

I am doing a research project, surveying "large" hospitals. 800 beds and up is the standard for a Large hospital. There are about 50 in the US.

Vespertinas · Feb 8, 2013

ours is >900...pretty large! i think about 100 of them are on my unit.

How can you have 100 in one unit? Is it one cost center? Do you work the whole unit?

Generally I've always worked in monster facilities with 800-1100 beds. The medium-sized hospitals in my area are all around 300 beds. Even though you didn't ask, I wanna add that I love working those medium hospitals because I think it's a perfect size.

I love AN because I never would have imagined the idea of a 15 or 20 bed hospital until some people mentioned it here!

classicdame, MSN, EdD · Feb 8, 2013

depends on who is asking. We are considered rural by CMS because of the population in our area, but our beds are around 400, which is not tiny by any means.

tswim · Feb 9, 2013

Know it's all subjective but here goes:

100-250 small

250-500 medium

500-850 large

>850 x-large

>1200 ginormous

Bed numbers don't necessarily correlate with 'Trauma' or 'Academic' designation either. I've worked at a ~250-bed level II trauma center... And Houston has 2 hospitals with over 700 beds that are not trauma designated at all.

DoGoodThenGo · Feb 9, 2013

How can you have 100 in one unit? Is it one cost center? Do you work the whole unit?
Generally I've always worked in monster facilities with 800-1100 beds. The medium-sized hospitals in my area are all around 300 beds. Even though you didn't ask, I wanna add that I love working those medium hospitals because I think it's a perfect size.
I love AN because I never would have imagined the idea of a 15 or 20 bed hospital until some people mentioned it here!

Some of the first hospitals in many areas of the United States got their start as *small* (

Today you have Critical Access Hospitals (CAH) that by statue

Hospital Type Definition - Critical Access Hospitals

Racer15, BSN, RN · Feb 9, 2013

My hospital has around 316 beds, and it's the biggest one in the area. I consider it to be medium sized. I don't think I'd want to work at one that was much larger, but that's just me :)