gisco_get_healthcare: Healthcare services in Europe

In giscoR: Download 'Eurostat' 'GISCO' Spatial Data

Healthcare services in Europe

Description

The dataset contains information on healthcare services considered hospitals by Member States. The definition varies slightly from country to country. Broadly, hospitals are licensed establishments primarily engaged in providing medical, diagnostic and treatment services, including physician, nursing and other health services to inpatients and the specialized 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
)

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. Defaults to TRUE. See the Caching strategies section in gisco_set_cache_dir().
update_cache	A logical value indicating whether to refresh the cached file. Defaults to FALSE. When set to TRUE, it forces a new download.
cache_dir	A character string with a path to a cache directory. See the Caching strategies section in gisco_set_cache_dir().
verbose	A logical value indicating whether to display informational messages.
country	A character vector of country codes. It can be either a vector of country names, a vector of ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 country codes or a vector of Eurostat country codes. See also countrycode::countrycode().

Details

Files are distributed in EPSG:4326.

The following table describes the healthcare service attributes:

Attribute	Description
id	The healthcare service identifier, based on national identification codes when available.
hospital_name	The name of the healthcare institution.
site_name	The name of a specific site or branch of the healthcare institution.
lat	Latitude (WGS 84).
lon	Longitude (WGS 84).
street	Street name.
house_number	House number.
postcode	Postcode.
address	Address information when the source does not separate address components.
city	City name. In some sources, this 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	Number of beds, the most common capacity measure.
cap_prac	Number of practitioners.
cap_rooms	Number of rooms.
facility_type	Type of healthcare service, such as a 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 reference date (DD/MM/YYYY) for the data.
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.

Value

An sf object.

Copyright

The general Eurostat copyright and license provisions apply. Detailed metadata also list source-specific licensing conditions by country and data provider. Review the conditions for the selected data before use.

Data quality

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

Source

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

See Also

Basic service datasets: gisco_get_education()

Examples

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

# Plot if downloaded.
if (
  !is.null(health_benelux) &&
    requireNamespace("ggplot2", quietly = TRUE)
) {
  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)
}

giscoR documentation built on Oct. 1, 2026, 5:13 p.m.