83% of people live within a 15-minute drive of a hospital

In 2023, the share of the EU population living within a 15-minute drive of a hospital was 83.2%. 

Among EU regions at level 3 of the nomenclature of territorial units for statistics (NUTS 3), there were 124 regions where 100% of the population lived within that 15-minute range (darkest shade of blue on the map), and 96 of those were located in Germany. 

The other regions in this group were in Belgium (6), the Netherlands (6, including the capital of Groot-Amsterdam), Greece (4, all of which are part of the capital), France (4, including Paris and 3 surrounding regions), Malta (both regions), and Spain, Italy and Poland (each 2 regions).

Source:  Eurostat calculations based on TomTom Multinet 2022, Geostat population grid 2021, Eurostat-GISCO hospital locations 2023 

At the other end of the range, there were 97 NUTS level 3 regions where less than 50% of the population lived within a 15-minute drive of a hospital in 2023 (yellow on the map). Among these regions, 21 were located in Romania, 15 in Greece, 9 each in Croatia and Spain, 8 in Poland, and another 6 each in Ireland, Portugal and Slovenia. 

There was also a small group of 7 regions where less than 10% of the population lived within 15 minutes driving time of a hospital. 4 of those regions were in Greece (Lefkada 0.0%; Lesvos, Limnos and Thesprotia, each 7.7%, and Chalkidiki 9.8%), and 3 were in Romania (Covasna 6.9%, Tulcea 7.0% and Mehedinţi 7.2%).

Eurostat has also analysed the geographic accessibility of hospitals at the level of the 1 km² grid, providing higher resolution information and bringing further insight into the topic.

This news article marks the World Health Day, celebrated every year on 7 April.