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, but roughly includes the following:

• Hospitals comprise licensed establishments primarily engaged in providing medical, diagnostic and treatment services that include 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 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 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 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 different components of the address are not separated in the source.
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	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, such as 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

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 license provisions, which apply to these datasets. Permission to download and use these data is subject to acceptance of those rules.

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

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)) {
  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 June 17, 2026, 9:10 a.m.