gisco_get_healthcare: Healthcare services in Europe

In giscoR: Download Map Data from GISCO API - Eurostat

Healthcare services in Europe

Description

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
)

Arguments

year	character string or number. Release year of the file. One of 2023, 2020.
cache	logical. Whether to do caching. Default is TRUE. See Caching strategies section in gisco_set_cache_dir().
update_cache	logical. Should the cached file be refreshed?. Default is FALSE. When set to TRUE it would force a new download.
cache_dir	character string. A path to a cache directory. See Caching strategies section in gisco_set_cache_dir().
verbose	logical. If TRUE displays informational messages.
country	character vector of country codes. It could be either a vector of country names, a vector of ISO3 country codes or a vector of Eurostat country codes. See also countrycode::countrycode().

Details

Files are distributed 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/no' for 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/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 link to 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.

Value

A sf object.

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 licence provisions, which must be complied with. Permission to download and use these data is 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.

See Also

Other basic services 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)) {
  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 Dec. 10, 2025, 9:08 a.m.