With up to 3,500 beds, these are long-established and respected hospitals
When Dark Daily recently published a list of the Top Ten Largest Health Care Systems in the United States, not only was it a popular topic, but many readers asked us to present a similar list for European hospitals. Dark Daily is glad to oblige and presents below a list of the Top Ten Largest Hospitals in Europe, ranked on bed size.
Probably the most interesting point about this list is that every hospital on this list of the Top Ten Largest Hospitals in Europe has more beds than the single largest hospital in the United States. At 1,550 beds, Jackson Memorial Hospital, in Miami, Florida, is generally recognized as the largest hospital in the United States, based on number of beds.
By contrast, among the top ten largest hospitals in Europe tenth place is held by two hospitals, each which has 1,800 beds. Tied for tenth place on the European list is LKH Klagenfurt in Austria and University Medical Center Freiburg in Germany.
This table shows a wide variation in staff ratios among the largest European hospitals. For example, there was a ratio of 2.1 employees-per-bed for the Clinical Centre of Serbia, compared to 7.3 employees-per-bed for Sahlgrenska University Hospital. In the United States, the average number of employees-per-bed is about 5.63, according to the American Hospital Association.
Largest Acute Care Hospitals in Europe
(ranked by number of patient beds)
|
Beds
|
Employees
|
|
| 1. Clinical Centre of Serbia |
3,500
|
7,500
|
| 2. Charite – Universitatsmedizin Berlin, Germany |
3,213
|
12,800
|
| 3. Helsinki University Central Hospital, Finland |
2,600
|
13,700
|
| 4. Motol University Hospital, Czech Republic |
2,410
|
5,424
|
| 5. Sahlgrenska University Hospital, Sweden |
2,300
|
17,000
|
| 6. Vienna General Hospital, Austria |
2,189
|
8,837
|
| 7. Semmelweis University Hospital, Hungary |
2,096
|
–
|
| 8. University Hospitals of Geneva, Switzerland |
2,096
|
8,451
|
| 9. University Hospital Pilsen, Czech Republic |
1,838
|
4,035
|
| 10. LKH Klagenfurt, Austria |
1800
|
4,000
|
| 10. University Medical Center Freiburg , Germany |
1800
|
8,000
|
| (Source: Modern Healthcare, 2010) | ||
| |
The large size of these hospitals means that their clinical laboratories will be of significant size. Dark Daily welcomes the comments of any pathologists or laboratory scientists who may have worked at any of these respected institutions and would like to share insights about the unique aspects of the clinical laboratories or histopathology laboratories. —K. Branz
Related Information:
Largest Acute Care Hospitals in Europe —February 8, 2010 by Modern Healthcare
Nations List of Top Ten Largest Healthcare Systems Include Some Surprises
Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust has 1660 beds and 12,000 employers
Charite is four hospitals, Sahlgrenska three hospitals, Geneva eight hospitals, Freiburg two hospitals, Helsinki twenty hospitals…
One of the largest hospital buildings in Europe is Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, East London with 675 beds 110 wards, 26 operating theatres and 3000 staff, opened in 2012.
The problem with this survey is the difficulty in defining the hospital. I have worked in several of the above, but also in larger institutions which do not appear on the list.
My impression is that campus style institutions are not identified as one hospital. A good example is Eurasante in Lille (France) – 3500 beds and 26,000 staff – which is a campus of one large teaching hospital plus 7-8 specialist hospitals around it. It is one administrative entity, each hospital only does its own specialty and many services are shared, including a 20,000 sample/day pathology.
The list published above seems to favour “all under one roof” hospitals.
Hospital of Lithuanian University of Health Sciences Kauno Klinikos (http://www.kmuk.lt/UK/) has 2000 beds and 1200 medical doctors and 2500 nursing specialists
University Hospital Leuven has 1894 beds and a staff of 8248.
Leeds Teaching Hospitals in England has 2,200 beds +300 day beds and a staff of 14,000 making it the 6th largest in Europe
Extremely interesting stats on European hospitals. I had no idea of the sizable number of beds that some of these hospitals
have.
Thank you for the research on this topic.
Do you have any similar stats on US hospitals? Beds vs. # of employees? You may have already posted info.