The Hospital Field
At the present time there are between 7,000 and 8,000 hospitals of over 10 beds in the United States, having a total bed capacity of almost 700,000. Over 80% are institutions of 100 beds or less, about 40% of 25 beds or less and 75% of all the hospitals of 500 beds or more are institutions for nervous and mental diseases. More than 40% of the total number of beds are in these last named institutions although they constitute less than 10% of the total number of hospitals. A bout 70% of all the hospitals are in communities of 50,000 or less and 56% of the counties of the country have no hospital facilities, although the bed occupancy in hospitals devoted to relatively acute conditions averages only 67%