Hospital closures, specifically in rural and underserved areas, have become a growing concern among many healthcare leaders, as they drive up costs and patient demand for other area facilities while leaving affected communities without proper care access.
Becker’s has reported on 15 hospital closures so far in 2025, with four of the closures occurring within just two weeks.
Other national data also highlight the far-reaching operational and financial effects of these closures, rippling far beyond the closed facilities themselves, affecting other health systems, local economies and patients.
Here are 21 numbers that shed additional light on the cost of hospital closures, based on data from KFF, the National Institutes of Health and other sources.
1. From 2010 to 2023, 300 hospitals closed while only 192 opened, according to a Feb. 19 KFF report, “Key Facts About Hospitals.”
2. That same report found that from 2017 to 2023, there were more hospital closures than openings in both rural and urban areas. Rural areas saw 61 hospital closures compared to 11 openings. Meanwhile, in urban locations, 87 hospitals closed and only 74 facilities opened. From 2005 to 2024 alone, 193 rural hospitals closed.
3. In 2023, around 35% of community hospitals were located in rural areas, with around 58% operating as nonprofit, 52% affiliated with a health system and around half having 25 or fewer beds, the KFF report said.
4. A Chartis “2025 Rural Health State of the State” report found that 432 rural hospitals are “vulnerable to closure” with 46% having a negative operating margin. The report also revealed that sequestration and bad debt reimbursement policies cost rural hospitals more than $650 million in 2025.
5. Since 2010, inpatient care access has disappeared in many rural communities, with 182 hospitals either having closed or converted to a facility that does not offer inpatient care, Chartis reported.
6. An NIH National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences report from March 2023 found of the 53 rural hospitals that closed, 66% were located in the South and 21% were in Appalachia. The spillover from these closures resulted in a $1.4 million average annual cost increase at for-profit hospitals, $2.1 million at government hospitals and $7.3 million for nonprofit hospitals.
