There’s a Huge Disparity in the Number of Available Hospital Beds. See Your County’s Capacity.

In the West, nearly 100,000 people over 65 years old live in counties without a hospital bed.

The emergency department of a hospital.Jonathan Torgovnik/Getty

The coronavirus is a rapidly developing news story, so some of the content in this article might be out of date. Check out our most recent coverage of the coronavirus crisis, and subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily newsletter.

This piece was originally published in High Country News and appears here as part of our Climate Desk Partnership.

Editor’s Note: The data here does not include all medical facilities and is a baseline look at hospital capacity based on available federal data. This story will be updated as we hear from locals who help fill in information gaps missing in the data.

As the Western United States continues to see a rise in COVID-19 cases, it’s important to get a sense of the region’s health-care capacity. Identifying underserved areas and connecting outbreaks to regional resources can help cities and counties prepare as the virus spreads. These maps and charts, compiled by Megan Lawson of Headwaters Economics, help give a snapshot* of hospital bed capacity around the West. Please note this information should be considered a jumping-off point for larger discussions about health-care infrastructure, not a resource for people in need of medical care.

The data collected here from the Department of Homeland Security and Commerce Department shows glaring deficiencies in capacity for many regions and unexpected trends regarding where hospital beds are available. For example, on average, rural areas in the West actually have more hospital beds per person than urban areas.

One reason rural areas have maintained this capacity is through a 1997 federal program that provides special funding to keep hospitals running in remote areas. This program has helped some rural hospitals keep their doors open, and yet many parts of the Western US still lack access to health care. That can be especially challenging for people over 65 who often face additional challenges reaching the nearest hospital even as they face higher risk of extended hospitalization and death from COVID-19. In Idaho, Oregon, Colorado and New Mexico, more than 19,000 citizens over the age of 65 live in counties without hospital beds.

In the Seattle area, the first epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic in the US, King and Snohomish counties combined have just more than 4,900 hospital beds. As of March 18, the two counties have 828 confirmed cases of COVID-19. While not every case will require hospitalization, it’s easy to see how the further spread of the virus could overwhelm medical facilities. This expected shortage is leading King County to build a temporary 200-bed hospital on a soccer field.

In Riverside County, California, the popular retirement community of Palm Springs has issued a shelter-in-place order. The county, home to more than 300,000 people over 65, has 1.1 beds for every 100 senior citizens. In Blaine County, Idaho, where three of the first nine confirmed cases in the state occurred, there is one hospital and 3,800 senior citizens.

In Idaho, many counties in rural parts of the state have no hospitals. More than 123,000 Idahoans live in counties without hospital beds.
 

 
Custer County, Colorado, is home to the largest senior population in the West living in a county without hospital beds. The Custer County Medical Center provides health care for area residents Monday through Friday.
 

Although some rural areas lack local access to hospitals, rural areas as a whole have more hospital beds per person than urban areas in the Western US.

More than 570,000 people in 11 Western states live in counties without hospitals. The majority of those residents are in Idaho, Colorado, New Mexico and Oregon.

We want to hear about your experience dealing with COVID-19. Are hospitals being stretched too thin and is greater capacity needed in your area? Are people finding creative solutions to help care for each other amid this pandemic? Even as we stay home and do our part to stay socially distant, we want to make sure we are connecting as much as possible with the High Country News community. Please consider sharing with us via this secure tip form. You can also share confidential information through this page.

* A note on the data from Headwaters Economics: “This analysis includes general acute-care hospitals and critical access hospitals in the US It does not include military, children’s, women’s, long term care, psychiatric, rehabilitation, or chronic disease facilities that are already being repurposed in some areas.”

More Mother Jones reporting on Climate Desk

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate