New tool tracks Georgia hospital losses

Georgia has one of the nation's highest net losses in hospitals over the past two decades, according to a new tool developed by the Health Care Affordability Lab at Yale.

Driving the news: While hospital closings play an outsized role in health policy debates, a new tracking tool shows that for every 10 U.S. facilities that shut from 2001 to 2023, eight opened.

What they found: Between 2001 and 2023, 644 U.S. hospitals closed and 502 opened — a net loss of 142 hospitals, according to the hospital markets tool, Axios' Tina Reed and Maya Goldman report.

• Over the same period, hospital beds per thousand residents dropped by over 20% from nearly three beds to just over two.

California, Georgia, New York, Pennsylvania and Michigan have had the highest net losses of hospitals over the period.

• Between 2001 and 2023, the lab researchers say, 8 hospitals opened in Georgia and 25 closed. In that same time period, Georgia's hospital beds per thousand residents fell from 2.9 to 2.1 — a 26% decline.

Zoom out: It's difficult to clearly track market changes at the local level. The task will become more important as changes from last year's sweeping Republican tax-and-spending package ripple through the health system.

Caveat: The tool doesn't yet have a full summary on openings over the past three years.

Between the lines: Closures have weighed heavily on facilities with narrow margins that are heavily reliant on public programs, typically in rural areas.