Healthcare services in Europe

The dataset contains information on main healthcare services considered to be 'hospitals' by Member States. The definition varies slightly from country to country, but roughly includes the following:

"'Hospitals' comprises licensed establishments primarily engaged in providing medical, diagnostic and treatment services that include physician, nursing and other health services to in-patients and the specialised accommodation services required by inpatients."*

Usage

gisco_get_healthcare(
  year = c(2023, 2020),
  cache = TRUE,
  update_cache = FALSE,
  cache_dir = NULL,
  verbose = FALSE,
  country = NULL
)

Source

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/gisco/geodata/basic-services.

There are no specific download rules for the datasets shown below. However, please refer to the general copyright notice and license provisions, which must be complied with. Permission to download and use these data are subject to these rules being accepted.

The data are extracted from official national registers. They may contain inconsistencies, inaccuracies and gaps, due to the heterogeneity of the input national data.

Arguments

year: A character string or numeric value with the release year of the file. One of 2023, 2020.
cache: A logical value indicating whether to cache results. Default is TRUE. See Caching strategies section in gisco_set_cache_dir().
update_cache: A logical value indicating whether to refresh the cached file. Default is FALSE. When set to TRUE, it forces a new download.
cache_dir: A character string with a path to a cache directory. See Caching strategies section in gisco_set_cache_dir().
verbose: A logical value. If TRUE displays informational messages.
country: A character vector of country codes. It can be either a vector of country names, a vector of ISO3 country codes or a vector of Eurostat country codes. See also countrycode::countrycode().

Value

A sf object.

Details

Files are distributed on EPSG:4326.

Brief description of each attribute:

Attribute	Description
`id`	The healthcare service identifier. This identifier is based on national identification codes, if it exists.
`hospital_name`	The name of the healthcare institution.
`site_name`	The name of the specific site or branch of a healthcare institution.
`lat`	Latitude (WGS 84).
`lon`	Longitude (WGS 84).
`street`	Street name.
`house_number`	House number.
`postcode`	Postcode.
`address`	Address information when the different components of the address are not separated in the source.
`city`	City name (sometimes refers to a region or municipality).
`cntr_id`	Country code (2 letters, ISO 3166-1 alpha-2).
`emergency`	`yes` or `no`, indicating whether the healthcare site provides emergency medical services.
`cap_beds`	Measure of capacity by number of beds (most common).
`cap_prac`	Measure of capacity by number of practitioners.
`cap_rooms`	Measure of capacity by number of rooms.
`facility_type`	Type of healthcare service (e.g., psychiatric hospital), based on national classification.
`public_private`	`public` or `private` status of the healthcare service.
`list_specs`	List of specialties recognized in the EU and EEA according to the 2005 EU Directive (Annex V).
`tel`	Telephone number.
`email`	Email address.
`url`	URL for the institution's website.
`ref_date`	The date (`DD/MM/YYYY`) the data refers to (reference date).
`pub_date`	The publication date of the dataset by Eurostat (`DD/MM/YYYY`).
`geo_qual`	Geolocation quality indicator: 1 = Good, 2 = Medium, 3 = Low, 4 = From source, -1 = Unknown, -2 = Not geocoded.
`comments`	Additional information on the healthcare service.

Examples

health_benelux <- gisco_get_healthcare(
  country = c("BE", "NL", "LU"),
  year = 2023
)

# Plot if downloaded
if (!is.null(health_benelux)) {
  benelux <- gisco_get_countries(country = c("BE", "NL", "LU"))

  library(ggplot2)
  ggplot(benelux) +
    geom_sf(fill = "grey10", color = "grey20") +
    geom_sf(
      data = health_benelux, color = "red",
      size = 0.2, alpha = 0.25
    ) +
    theme_void() +
    theme(
      plot.background = element_rect(fill = "black"),
      text = element_text(color = "white"),
      panel.grid = element_blank(),
      plot.title = element_text(face = "bold", hjust = 0.5),
      plot.subtitle = element_text(face = "italic", hjust = 0.5)
    ) +
    labs(
      title = "Healthcare services", subtitle = "Benelux (2023)",
      caption = "Source: Eurostat, Healthcare 2023 dataset."
    ) +
    coord_sf(crs = 3035)
}