Between 2015 and 2025, the U.S. saw a 4% annual increase in hospital closures and a 3% annual decrease in hospital openings.
Researchers from Harvard University’s school of public health and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston published a study Oct. 8 in JAMA detailing the rate of hospital openings and closures since 2010.
Nonprofit hospitals closed at a higher rate than for-profit locations, but urban and rural hospitals closed at comparable rates. Between 2015 and 2025, 205 hospitals with 25-99 beds closed, compared to 119 hospitals with 100-399 beds, 100 hospitals with fewer than 25 beds, and eight hospitals with at least 400 beds.
“Among 4,962 hospitals studied, 432 closed and 216 opened, leading to a net loss of 216 hospitals and 24,399 beds from 2015 to 2025,” Vizient wrote in a Nov. 6 post about the study. “Of the closures, 315 hospitals closed fully and 117 retained outpatient services, including 45 rural emergency hospitals.”
The net loss of 24,399 beds over the decade points to a tightening of inpatient capacity even in markets where a hospital’s doors stay open.
That pattern suggests the closure question is shifting from whether a facility survives to what it survives as. The faster pace of closures paired with slowing openings leaves fewer new hospitals to offset the losses, and the study captures a market increasingly managing decline through partial conversions rather than full exits — a dynamic that will shape access, referral patterns and capital planning for the systems absorbing displaced volume.
