Here are the 20 largest public hospitals in the United States listed by number of beds. These facilities include hospitals operated by a hospital district, a city, a county, or a city-county partnership.
Note: The hospital bed counts reported here include all medical/surgical and special care beds as reported to CMS by the hospitals in their most recent cost reports and, in some cases, may include bed counts from other facilities that share a provider number with the main hospital.
1. Jackson Memorial Hospital, Miami — 1,756. Jackson Memorial is the flagship of the Jackson Health System. The system is owned and operated by Miami-Dade County through the Public Health Trust and is supported by county residents through a half-cent sales tax. Jackson Memorial, the third-largest teaching hospital in the United States, is affiliated with the University of Miami Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine in Miami. It hosts the Ryder Trauma Center, the only Level I adult and pediatric trauma center in the county. The health system also includes Jackson South Community Hospital, Holtz Children's Hospital, Jackson Rehabilitation Hospital, Jackson Mental Health Hospital and Jackson North Medical Center in North Miami, the teaching hospital of the new Florida International University Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine. Jackson Health System logged a surplus of $4 million in June, after cleaning up its credit balances in accounts receivables. Without the adjustment, the system would have lost $16 million.
2. Erie County Medical Center, Buffalo, N.Y. — 1,137. The Erie County Medical Center is a regional center for trauma, burn, rehabilitation and cardiac care. It is also a major teaching facility, affiliated with the University at Buffalo. For the past ten years, the hospital has hosted popular "Camp 9-1-1" events that are designed to provide children ages ten through 13 with an introduction to emergency medical services. In July 2010, the hospital was awarded the American Stroke Association's Get With the Guidelines Stroke Bronze Performance Achievement Award. This award gives credit to the ECMC's commitment and successful implementation of higher standards of stroke care by ensuring that stroke patients receive proper treatment in accordance with nationally accepted standards. The hospital was also recognized for an impressive goal of treating heart failure patients with 85 percent compliance for one year to core standard levels of care.
3. Memorial Regional Hospital, Hollywood, Fla. — 1,014. Memorial Regional Hospital opened in 1953. It is the flagship hospital of Memorial Healthcare System, which also includes Memorial Regional Hospital South and Joe DiMaggio Children's Hospital, Memorial Hospital West, Memorial Hospital Miramar and Memorial Hospital Pembroke. Memorial Regional is one of seven Level I trauma centers in the state and its expanded and modernized ED is the busiest in Broward County. Each year, the hospital admits 37,431 patients, its ED sees 126,288 patients and it hosts 8,169 inpatient and 6,464 outpatient surgeries. The hospital runs the Memorial Cardiac and Vascular Institute, the Memorial Cancer Institute, a Breast Cancer Center and the Memorial Neuroscience Center.
4. Bergen Regional Medical Center, Paramus, N.J. — 1,006. Bergen Regional is both the largest hospital and includes the largest licensed nursing home in New Jersey. The medical center provides a comprehensive set of quality services including long-term care, behavioral health care and acute-care to Bergen County. Bergen Regional also has a full service emergency department, state-of-the-art operating suites and 21 ambulatory specialty services available through the BRMC clinic. The stated mission of Bergen Regional Medical Center is to provide high quality, compassionate, cost-effective healthcare services to the New Jersey community, including the underserved.
5. Grady Memorial Hospital, Atlanta. — 918. Grady is the public hospital for the city of Atlanta and the largest hospital in the state of Georgia. Opened in 1892 as a segregated institution, it was named after a Georgia politician who owned the Atlanta Constitution. It is now the flagship of the Grady Health System. In 2008, Grady was made into a non-profit organization and a revitalization campaign began. With a $50 million operating deficit, the new organization hired Michael Young, former CEO of Erie County Medical Center in Buffalo, N.Y., as the new CEO. In Nov. 2009, Mr. Young opened four new community health "super centers" around the Atlanta area to reduce overcrowding in the Grady ED. In May, Grady reached a positive operating margin for the first time in a decade. And in June, Mr. Young was awarded a bonus of nearly $300,000 for turning the hospital around.
6. Laguna Honda Hospital, San Francisco. — 855. Laguna Honda opened in 1866, and began offering care to some of the first San Franciscans — the intrepid Gold Rush pioneers. The hospital has served its city’s safety net population for over-140 years since. San Francisco voters approved the addition of three new buildings to the hospital site, and in June 2010, Laguna Honda received silver certification by the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program, making it the first green-certified hospital in California. The new buildings bring Laguna Honda energy savings, improved water conservation and greenhouse gas reduction, among many other benefits.
7. Ben Taub General Hospital, Houston. — 843. Named after a Houston real estate baron, the hospital opened in 1963 and is operated by the Harris County Hospital District. Harris County has the nation's highest proportion of uninsured patients. The hospital is at the center of Texas Medical Center, which contains 13 hospitals and two specialty institutions, two medical schools, four nursing schools, and schools of dentistry, public health, pharmacy and other health-related practices. Ben Taub is staffed by physicians from the Baylor College of Medicine. It is a Level I trauma center, one of three in Southeast Texas, and its ED is the source of eighty percent of all admissions. The hospital district has dropped plans to close pediatrics services at Ben Taub but proposes to shift the care to neighborhood health centers and Texas Children's Hospital.
8. Carolinas Medical Center, Charlotte, N.C. — 827. Opened in 1940 as Charlotte Memorial Hospital, the medical center has undergone several major expansions and now encompasses 17 buildings. It is the flagship of Carolinas Healthcare System, one of the largest public, nonprofit healthcare systems in the United States, with 32 affiliated hospitals and 500 other healthcare locations in North and South Carolina, including physician practices, nursing homes, surgical and rehabilitation centers and home health agencies. CMC is home to a Level I trauma center, a research institute and specialty units for heart, cancer, organ transplant, behavioral health and other areas. The medical center serves as one of North Carolina's five academic medical center teaching hospitals, providing graduate medical education for more than 250 physicians in 18 specialties.
9. Westchester Medical Center, Valhalla, N.Y. — 816. Westchester Medical Center dates back to 1918, when the U.S. Army took over county buildings and created a hospital to treat troops infected by the deadly Spanish Influenza epidemic. After the war, the Army returned the buildings to the county as a fully equipped hospital. In 1998, the medical center broke away from county government and became a public benefit corporation, maintaining its public mission to treat anyone in need of advanced medical care. Westchester Medical Center serves more than 120,000 patients a year. It is the only hospital in the Hudson Valley with a full-service heart center, an all-specialty children's hospital, a pediatric ICU, a Level I trauma center with a 24-hour medevac helicopter, a burn unit and a transplant center. Its Children's Hospital hosts one of only five pediatric asthma clinical research centers in the nation. Its comprehensive cardiac program has logged more than 1.5 million procedures and its transplant center has performed more than 2,000 transplants.
10. Sarasota Memorial Hospital, Sarasota, Fla. — 786. Sarasota Memorial Hospital is part of Sarasota Memorial Health Care System, one of the largest acute-care public health systems in Florida. Founded in 1925, it is governed by the nine-member elected body, the Sarasota County Public Hospital Board. Sarasota Memorial has 741 physicians on staff and more than 4,000 employees. In 2009, it logged 24,742 inpatient stays, 78,160 ED visits, 3,174 births, and 708,927 outpatient visits. It boasts specialized expertise in heart, vascular, cancer, and neuroscience services and runs a network of outpatient centers, long-term care and rehabilitation centers. The hospital is starting a $250 million campus improvement project, its biggest construction project in half a century. A new nine-floor tower will feature private rooms, labor and delivery suites, an intensive care nursery, an expanded surgery center, and new orthopedic, medical and surgical units.
11. Parkland Memorial Hospital, Dallas. — 755. Parkland is the main hospital of the Dallas County Hospital District, also known as Parkland Health and Hospital System, and is primarily funded by a specially designated property tax. The original hospital opened in 1894 and a new hospital is scheduled to be completed in 2014. One of the area's three designated Level I Trauma centers today, Parkland is best known as the hospital where John F. Kennedy was taken after his assassination on Nov. 22, 1963. Also in the 1960s, Parkland's burn unit developed the Parkland Formula for fluid resuscitation. Virtually all medical and surgical subspecialties are represented on its medical staff. Parkland delivers more babies under one roof than any other hospital in the nation, averaging 15,000-16,000 deliveries per year. The hospital has nine prenatal clinics and trains 72 ob-gyn residents and 45 nurse-midwives. This year, Parkland reduced wait times in its ED by 25 percent through a rapid admission protocol that cuts back the admission process from 50 steps to 10 steps.
12. Los Angeles County + University of Southern California Medical Center, Los Angeles, CA. — 738. The hospital, commonly referred to as LAC+USC Medical Center and County General, is owned and operated by Los Angeles County and is the largest single provider of healthcare in the county. The distinctive Art Deco-style old hospital building has appeared in TV series from "Dr. Kildare" to "General Hospital." In Nov. 2008, LAC+USC opened a new, $1 billion replacement hospital. LAC+USC is a Level I trauma center. It treats more than 28 percent of the region's trauma victims and provides care for half of all AIDS and sickle-cell anemia patients in Southern California. LAC+USC is one of the busiest public hospitals in the West, with nearly 39,000 inpatients discharged, and one million ambulatory care patient visits each year. The ED is one of the world's busiest, with more than 150,000 visits per year. It operates one of only three burn centers in the county and is one of the few Level III neonatal intensive care units in Southern California.
13. Maricopa Medical Center, Phoenix, AZ. — 718. Maricopa Medical Center is part of Maricopa Integrated Health System, which also includes the Arizona Burn Center, the Comprehensive Healthcare Center, the McDowell Healthcare Clinic, 10 community-oriented family health centers and an attendant care program. Maricopa Medical Center sees nearly 20,000 inpatient admissions a year. It features burn care, pediatric and adult emergency care and is a Level I Trauma Center. About 50,000 patients receive urgent and emergency care in the center each year and about 5,000 babies are born at Maricopa Medical Center each year. Its neonatal intensive care unit provides specialized care for up to 40 critically ill and premature newborns. The Pediatric ED is the only pediatric emergency department in the Phoenix area open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
14. Kings County Hospital Center, Brooklyn, N.Y. — 700. Starting off as an almshouse for the poor in the 1830s, the hospital was the first to develop a hemodialysis machine, open a Level I trauma center, conduct studies of HIV infection in women and produce MRI images of humans. Kings County is part of the Health and Hospitals Corporation, which runs New York City's public hospitals. Citing Kings County's very active ED, which treats 600 gunshot and stabbing victims a year, the U.S. Army established the Academy of Advanced Combat Medicine in the hospital to train reservists in combat care. Each year, 103,537 patients visit the ED, 24,859 patients are admitted, and the hospital hosts 3,508 inpatient and 9,160 outpatient surgeries. Kings County is affiliated with SUNY Downstate Medical Center and anchors the Central Brooklyn Family Health Network. The hospital opened 250,000-square-foot tower in 2001, a 260,000-square-foot treatment and diagnostic center in 2005 and an ambulatory center in 2006.
15. New Hanover Regional Medical Center, Wilmington, N.C. — 679. New Hanover receives no local tax support for its operations and expects to contribute about $37 million this year if free care for the poor. The New Hanover Memorial Hospital, opened in 1967, resulted from the merger of two racially segregated hospitals. The facility, which later changed its name to New Hanover Regional Medical Center, now includes three hospital campuses. The Surgical Pavilion and the Betty H. Cameron Women's and Children's Hospital opened in 2008 as part of the largest building and renovation project in its history. The next phase, expected to be completed in December, includes top-down renovation of the main patient tower to create nearly all private rooms and redesigned spaces to make patients and their families more comfortable.
16. Broward General Medical Center, Fort Lauderdale, Fla. — 640. Broward General was founded in 1938 and continues its mission to provide all the people of Broward County with the best possible medical care. The hospital boasts the Heart Center of Excellence, which was distinguished as one of the nation’s top centers for cardiovascular treatment, and is dedicated to providing comprehensive clinical, surgical and rehabilitative care. HealthGrades has ranked Broward General in the top five percent throughout the nation in quality of patient outcomes. Broward General is one of only 269 hospitals ranked in the new study earning it the HealthGrades Distinguished Hospital for Clinical Excellence Award. The medical center also features a Comprehensive Cancer Center, a Joint Replacement Center, an Orthopedic Sports Medicine Center, a Sleep Disorders Center, and The Wellness Center.
17. Jackson-Madison County General Hospital, Jackson, Tenn. — 633. General Hospital opened in August of 1950 as a 123-bed community hospital and has become one of the state’s most respected healthcare sites. This facility is the flagship of West Tennessee Healthcare, and is the only tertiary care hospital between Memphis and Nashville. General Hospital boasts six ‘centers of excellence’: the Tennessee Heart and Vascular Center, Kirkland Cancer Center, West Tennessee Women’s Center, West Tennessee Rehabilitation Center, West Tennessee Neuroscience and Spine and Emergency Services. In the fall of 2008, General Hospital completed a 365,000 sq. ft., multi-million-dollar expansion to enhance the space with 280 new, modern patient rooms, new Cardiac Cath lab suites and many more features.
18. University Medical Center, Las Vegas. — 564. University Medical Center is the state-designated Level I Trauma Center for Southern Nevada and the only free standing trauma center west of the Mississippi. The Medical Center also houses the state’s only burn care facility, the Lion’s Burn Care Center. In August of 2010, UMC was recognized for achievement in using evidence-based guidelines to provide the best possible care to patients through The American Heart Association/American Stroke Association’s Get With The Guidelines program. UMC maintains educational partnerships with the University of Nevada School of Medicine, the Department of Pharmaceutical Specialties residency program accredited by the American Society of HealthSystem Pharmacists, Touro Medical School, and the College of Southern Nevada.
19. Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, San Jose, Calif. — 554. The first hospital at the Santa Clara site was built in 1876 by San Jose’s first medical practitioner, Dr. Benjamin Cory. Today, SCVMC is a teaching hospital affiliated with Stanford and UC medical schools, and is supported by the latest in medical technology and modern facilities. The hospital is publicly owned and operated by the county of Santa Clara as the healthcare safety net. In 2010, SCVMC received the prestigious Kaiser Permanente James A. Vohs Award for Quality for its program to reduce cardiac risk by managing severe chronic diseases.
20. Cape Fear Valley Medical Center, Fayetteville, N.C. — 549. Cape Fear Valley Medical Center opened in 1956 as a 200-bed county hospital. Today, half a century after its opening, the medical center is the healthcare provider of choice for thousands of families in the Cape Fear region. The center is an acute-care hospital and specializes in heart care, cancer treatment and surgical services. The facility features a full-service family birth center as well as a Level III Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. The medical center is a branch of Cape Fear Valley Health, the ninth largest health system in the state.
Note: The hospital bed counts reported here include all medical/surgical and special care beds as reported to CMS by the hospitals in their most recent cost reports and, in some cases, may include bed counts from other facilities that share a provider number with the main hospital.
1. Jackson Memorial Hospital, Miami — 1,756. Jackson Memorial is the flagship of the Jackson Health System. The system is owned and operated by Miami-Dade County through the Public Health Trust and is supported by county residents through a half-cent sales tax. Jackson Memorial, the third-largest teaching hospital in the United States, is affiliated with the University of Miami Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine in Miami. It hosts the Ryder Trauma Center, the only Level I adult and pediatric trauma center in the county. The health system also includes Jackson South Community Hospital, Holtz Children's Hospital, Jackson Rehabilitation Hospital, Jackson Mental Health Hospital and Jackson North Medical Center in North Miami, the teaching hospital of the new Florida International University Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine. Jackson Health System logged a surplus of $4 million in June, after cleaning up its credit balances in accounts receivables. Without the adjustment, the system would have lost $16 million.
2. Erie County Medical Center, Buffalo, N.Y. — 1,137. The Erie County Medical Center is a regional center for trauma, burn, rehabilitation and cardiac care. It is also a major teaching facility, affiliated with the University at Buffalo. For the past ten years, the hospital has hosted popular "Camp 9-1-1" events that are designed to provide children ages ten through 13 with an introduction to emergency medical services. In July 2010, the hospital was awarded the American Stroke Association's Get With the Guidelines Stroke Bronze Performance Achievement Award. This award gives credit to the ECMC's commitment and successful implementation of higher standards of stroke care by ensuring that stroke patients receive proper treatment in accordance with nationally accepted standards. The hospital was also recognized for an impressive goal of treating heart failure patients with 85 percent compliance for one year to core standard levels of care.
3. Memorial Regional Hospital, Hollywood, Fla. — 1,014. Memorial Regional Hospital opened in 1953. It is the flagship hospital of Memorial Healthcare System, which also includes Memorial Regional Hospital South and Joe DiMaggio Children's Hospital, Memorial Hospital West, Memorial Hospital Miramar and Memorial Hospital Pembroke. Memorial Regional is one of seven Level I trauma centers in the state and its expanded and modernized ED is the busiest in Broward County. Each year, the hospital admits 37,431 patients, its ED sees 126,288 patients and it hosts 8,169 inpatient and 6,464 outpatient surgeries. The hospital runs the Memorial Cardiac and Vascular Institute, the Memorial Cancer Institute, a Breast Cancer Center and the Memorial Neuroscience Center.
4. Bergen Regional Medical Center, Paramus, N.J. — 1,006. Bergen Regional is both the largest hospital and includes the largest licensed nursing home in New Jersey. The medical center provides a comprehensive set of quality services including long-term care, behavioral health care and acute-care to Bergen County. Bergen Regional also has a full service emergency department, state-of-the-art operating suites and 21 ambulatory specialty services available through the BRMC clinic. The stated mission of Bergen Regional Medical Center is to provide high quality, compassionate, cost-effective healthcare services to the New Jersey community, including the underserved.
5. Grady Memorial Hospital, Atlanta. — 918. Grady is the public hospital for the city of Atlanta and the largest hospital in the state of Georgia. Opened in 1892 as a segregated institution, it was named after a Georgia politician who owned the Atlanta Constitution. It is now the flagship of the Grady Health System. In 2008, Grady was made into a non-profit organization and a revitalization campaign began. With a $50 million operating deficit, the new organization hired Michael Young, former CEO of Erie County Medical Center in Buffalo, N.Y., as the new CEO. In Nov. 2009, Mr. Young opened four new community health "super centers" around the Atlanta area to reduce overcrowding in the Grady ED. In May, Grady reached a positive operating margin for the first time in a decade. And in June, Mr. Young was awarded a bonus of nearly $300,000 for turning the hospital around.
6. Laguna Honda Hospital, San Francisco. — 855. Laguna Honda opened in 1866, and began offering care to some of the first San Franciscans — the intrepid Gold Rush pioneers. The hospital has served its city’s safety net population for over-140 years since. San Francisco voters approved the addition of three new buildings to the hospital site, and in June 2010, Laguna Honda received silver certification by the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program, making it the first green-certified hospital in California. The new buildings bring Laguna Honda energy savings, improved water conservation and greenhouse gas reduction, among many other benefits.
7. Ben Taub General Hospital, Houston. — 843. Named after a Houston real estate baron, the hospital opened in 1963 and is operated by the Harris County Hospital District. Harris County has the nation's highest proportion of uninsured patients. The hospital is at the center of Texas Medical Center, which contains 13 hospitals and two specialty institutions, two medical schools, four nursing schools, and schools of dentistry, public health, pharmacy and other health-related practices. Ben Taub is staffed by physicians from the Baylor College of Medicine. It is a Level I trauma center, one of three in Southeast Texas, and its ED is the source of eighty percent of all admissions. The hospital district has dropped plans to close pediatrics services at Ben Taub but proposes to shift the care to neighborhood health centers and Texas Children's Hospital.
8. Carolinas Medical Center, Charlotte, N.C. — 827. Opened in 1940 as Charlotte Memorial Hospital, the medical center has undergone several major expansions and now encompasses 17 buildings. It is the flagship of Carolinas Healthcare System, one of the largest public, nonprofit healthcare systems in the United States, with 32 affiliated hospitals and 500 other healthcare locations in North and South Carolina, including physician practices, nursing homes, surgical and rehabilitation centers and home health agencies. CMC is home to a Level I trauma center, a research institute and specialty units for heart, cancer, organ transplant, behavioral health and other areas. The medical center serves as one of North Carolina's five academic medical center teaching hospitals, providing graduate medical education for more than 250 physicians in 18 specialties.
9. Westchester Medical Center, Valhalla, N.Y. — 816. Westchester Medical Center dates back to 1918, when the U.S. Army took over county buildings and created a hospital to treat troops infected by the deadly Spanish Influenza epidemic. After the war, the Army returned the buildings to the county as a fully equipped hospital. In 1998, the medical center broke away from county government and became a public benefit corporation, maintaining its public mission to treat anyone in need of advanced medical care. Westchester Medical Center serves more than 120,000 patients a year. It is the only hospital in the Hudson Valley with a full-service heart center, an all-specialty children's hospital, a pediatric ICU, a Level I trauma center with a 24-hour medevac helicopter, a burn unit and a transplant center. Its Children's Hospital hosts one of only five pediatric asthma clinical research centers in the nation. Its comprehensive cardiac program has logged more than 1.5 million procedures and its transplant center has performed more than 2,000 transplants.
10. Sarasota Memorial Hospital, Sarasota, Fla. — 786. Sarasota Memorial Hospital is part of Sarasota Memorial Health Care System, one of the largest acute-care public health systems in Florida. Founded in 1925, it is governed by the nine-member elected body, the Sarasota County Public Hospital Board. Sarasota Memorial has 741 physicians on staff and more than 4,000 employees. In 2009, it logged 24,742 inpatient stays, 78,160 ED visits, 3,174 births, and 708,927 outpatient visits. It boasts specialized expertise in heart, vascular, cancer, and neuroscience services and runs a network of outpatient centers, long-term care and rehabilitation centers. The hospital is starting a $250 million campus improvement project, its biggest construction project in half a century. A new nine-floor tower will feature private rooms, labor and delivery suites, an intensive care nursery, an expanded surgery center, and new orthopedic, medical and surgical units.
11. Parkland Memorial Hospital, Dallas. — 755. Parkland is the main hospital of the Dallas County Hospital District, also known as Parkland Health and Hospital System, and is primarily funded by a specially designated property tax. The original hospital opened in 1894 and a new hospital is scheduled to be completed in 2014. One of the area's three designated Level I Trauma centers today, Parkland is best known as the hospital where John F. Kennedy was taken after his assassination on Nov. 22, 1963. Also in the 1960s, Parkland's burn unit developed the Parkland Formula for fluid resuscitation. Virtually all medical and surgical subspecialties are represented on its medical staff. Parkland delivers more babies under one roof than any other hospital in the nation, averaging 15,000-16,000 deliveries per year. The hospital has nine prenatal clinics and trains 72 ob-gyn residents and 45 nurse-midwives. This year, Parkland reduced wait times in its ED by 25 percent through a rapid admission protocol that cuts back the admission process from 50 steps to 10 steps.
12. Los Angeles County + University of Southern California Medical Center, Los Angeles, CA. — 738. The hospital, commonly referred to as LAC+USC Medical Center and County General, is owned and operated by Los Angeles County and is the largest single provider of healthcare in the county. The distinctive Art Deco-style old hospital building has appeared in TV series from "Dr. Kildare" to "General Hospital." In Nov. 2008, LAC+USC opened a new, $1 billion replacement hospital. LAC+USC is a Level I trauma center. It treats more than 28 percent of the region's trauma victims and provides care for half of all AIDS and sickle-cell anemia patients in Southern California. LAC+USC is one of the busiest public hospitals in the West, with nearly 39,000 inpatients discharged, and one million ambulatory care patient visits each year. The ED is one of the world's busiest, with more than 150,000 visits per year. It operates one of only three burn centers in the county and is one of the few Level III neonatal intensive care units in Southern California.
13. Maricopa Medical Center, Phoenix, AZ. — 718. Maricopa Medical Center is part of Maricopa Integrated Health System, which also includes the Arizona Burn Center, the Comprehensive Healthcare Center, the McDowell Healthcare Clinic, 10 community-oriented family health centers and an attendant care program. Maricopa Medical Center sees nearly 20,000 inpatient admissions a year. It features burn care, pediatric and adult emergency care and is a Level I Trauma Center. About 50,000 patients receive urgent and emergency care in the center each year and about 5,000 babies are born at Maricopa Medical Center each year. Its neonatal intensive care unit provides specialized care for up to 40 critically ill and premature newborns. The Pediatric ED is the only pediatric emergency department in the Phoenix area open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
14. Kings County Hospital Center, Brooklyn, N.Y. — 700. Starting off as an almshouse for the poor in the 1830s, the hospital was the first to develop a hemodialysis machine, open a Level I trauma center, conduct studies of HIV infection in women and produce MRI images of humans. Kings County is part of the Health and Hospitals Corporation, which runs New York City's public hospitals. Citing Kings County's very active ED, which treats 600 gunshot and stabbing victims a year, the U.S. Army established the Academy of Advanced Combat Medicine in the hospital to train reservists in combat care. Each year, 103,537 patients visit the ED, 24,859 patients are admitted, and the hospital hosts 3,508 inpatient and 9,160 outpatient surgeries. Kings County is affiliated with SUNY Downstate Medical Center and anchors the Central Brooklyn Family Health Network. The hospital opened 250,000-square-foot tower in 2001, a 260,000-square-foot treatment and diagnostic center in 2005 and an ambulatory center in 2006.
15. New Hanover Regional Medical Center, Wilmington, N.C. — 679. New Hanover receives no local tax support for its operations and expects to contribute about $37 million this year if free care for the poor. The New Hanover Memorial Hospital, opened in 1967, resulted from the merger of two racially segregated hospitals. The facility, which later changed its name to New Hanover Regional Medical Center, now includes three hospital campuses. The Surgical Pavilion and the Betty H. Cameron Women's and Children's Hospital opened in 2008 as part of the largest building and renovation project in its history. The next phase, expected to be completed in December, includes top-down renovation of the main patient tower to create nearly all private rooms and redesigned spaces to make patients and their families more comfortable.
16. Broward General Medical Center, Fort Lauderdale, Fla. — 640. Broward General was founded in 1938 and continues its mission to provide all the people of Broward County with the best possible medical care. The hospital boasts the Heart Center of Excellence, which was distinguished as one of the nation’s top centers for cardiovascular treatment, and is dedicated to providing comprehensive clinical, surgical and rehabilitative care. HealthGrades has ranked Broward General in the top five percent throughout the nation in quality of patient outcomes. Broward General is one of only 269 hospitals ranked in the new study earning it the HealthGrades Distinguished Hospital for Clinical Excellence Award. The medical center also features a Comprehensive Cancer Center, a Joint Replacement Center, an Orthopedic Sports Medicine Center, a Sleep Disorders Center, and The Wellness Center.
17. Jackson-Madison County General Hospital, Jackson, Tenn. — 633. General Hospital opened in August of 1950 as a 123-bed community hospital and has become one of the state’s most respected healthcare sites. This facility is the flagship of West Tennessee Healthcare, and is the only tertiary care hospital between Memphis and Nashville. General Hospital boasts six ‘centers of excellence’: the Tennessee Heart and Vascular Center, Kirkland Cancer Center, West Tennessee Women’s Center, West Tennessee Rehabilitation Center, West Tennessee Neuroscience and Spine and Emergency Services. In the fall of 2008, General Hospital completed a 365,000 sq. ft., multi-million-dollar expansion to enhance the space with 280 new, modern patient rooms, new Cardiac Cath lab suites and many more features.
18. University Medical Center, Las Vegas. — 564. University Medical Center is the state-designated Level I Trauma Center for Southern Nevada and the only free standing trauma center west of the Mississippi. The Medical Center also houses the state’s only burn care facility, the Lion’s Burn Care Center. In August of 2010, UMC was recognized for achievement in using evidence-based guidelines to provide the best possible care to patients through The American Heart Association/American Stroke Association’s Get With The Guidelines program. UMC maintains educational partnerships with the University of Nevada School of Medicine, the Department of Pharmaceutical Specialties residency program accredited by the American Society of HealthSystem Pharmacists, Touro Medical School, and the College of Southern Nevada.
19. Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, San Jose, Calif. — 554. The first hospital at the Santa Clara site was built in 1876 by San Jose’s first medical practitioner, Dr. Benjamin Cory. Today, SCVMC is a teaching hospital affiliated with Stanford and UC medical schools, and is supported by the latest in medical technology and modern facilities. The hospital is publicly owned and operated by the county of Santa Clara as the healthcare safety net. In 2010, SCVMC received the prestigious Kaiser Permanente James A. Vohs Award for Quality for its program to reduce cardiac risk by managing severe chronic diseases.
20. Cape Fear Valley Medical Center, Fayetteville, N.C. — 549. Cape Fear Valley Medical Center opened in 1956 as a 200-bed county hospital. Today, half a century after its opening, the medical center is the healthcare provider of choice for thousands of families in the Cape Fear region. The center is an acute-care hospital and specializes in heart care, cancer treatment and surgical services. The facility features a full-service family birth center as well as a Level III Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. The medical center is a branch of Cape Fear Valley Health, the ninth largest health system in the state.