PlainHospital

Critical access hospitals

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services lists 1,378 critical access hospitals across 45 states and territories. 400 of them carry a CMS Overall Star Rating (29.0%), and 44 hold five stars. 1,339 report an emergency department.

Small rural hospitals with 25 or fewer inpatient beds, located far from other hospitals, paid differently by Medicare to keep rural access open. Their low case volumes are why CMS publishes no overall star rating for most of them.

Data as of , from CMS Hospital Compare.

Hospitals
1,378
With a star rating
400
With an ER
1,339
States covered
45

Where critical access hospitals are concentrated

The twelve states with the most, by count

hospitals

What this shows TX has the most with 93. Counts follow population and, for rural categories, geography rather than quality.

Source CMS Hospital Compare As of August 2026

Critical access hospitals by state

State Hospitals With a star rating With an ER
TX 93 12 91
IA 82 31 80
KS 82 20 78
MN 76 12 74
NE 62 15 60
WI 58 25 58
IL 55 26 55
MT 50 9 48
OK 39 5 39
SD 39 5 38
WA 39 14 39
CA 38 14 35
ND 37 8 37
MI 35 10 35
MO 35 16 35
IN 33 16 33
OH 33 16 31
CO 32 5 31
GA 31 2 26
AR 29 7 29
KY 29 7 29
MS 29 4 29
LA 27 1 27
ID 26 9 25
OR 25 14 25
WV 21 9 21
NC 20 11 20
NY 20 6 19
WY 19 8 17
ME 18 10 17
AZ 17 3 14
PA 17 10 17
TN 15 3 14
AK 13 2 13
NH 13 10 13
NM 13 3 12
NV 13 5 13
UT 13 1 13
FL 12 3 11
HI 9 0 9
AL 8 0 7
VA 8 5 8
VT 8 5 7
MA 4 3 4
SC 3 0 3

State links open the full hospital directory for that state, across every facility type.

Highest-rated critical access hospitals

Hospital Location CMS rating
ADVENTIST HEALTH HOWARD MEMORIAL WILLITS, CA 5 of 5
ASCENSION SETON HIGHLAND LAKES BURNET, TX 5 of 5
AVERA ST BENEDICT HEALTH CENTER - CAH PARKSTON, SD 5 of 5
BRONSON LAKEVIEW HOSPITAL PAW PAW, MI 5 of 5
CARSON VALLEY HEALTH GARDNERVILLE, NV 5 of 5
CASS COUNTY MEMORIAL HOSPITAL ATLANTIC, IA 5 of 5
CENTRACARE HEALTH SYSTEM - MELROSE HOSPITAL MELROSE, MN 5 of 5
CHI MERCY HEALTH VALLEY CITY, ND 5 of 5
CLARKE COUNTY HOSPITAL OSCEOLA, IA 5 of 5
COMMUNITY HOSPITAL OF ANACONDA ANACONDA, MT 5 of 5

Ties are broken alphabetically, not by any further ranking of our own.

Who runs them

Ownership Hospitals
Voluntary non-profit - Private 648
Government - Hospital District or Authority 282
Government - Local 226
Voluntary non-profit - Other 74
Proprietary 61
Voluntary non-profit - Church 54

Other categories: all hospital types · national figures on statistics · the underlying file is downloadable as CSV.

Source: Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Hospital Compare / Care Compare, Hospital General Information · August 2026 Facility type, ownership and emergency-service flags are published by CMS per hospital. Counts are computed by PlainHospital from those records.

Every figure on PlainHospital is rendered directly from federal source data, no number is typed in by an editor. Counts are live queries over the CMS facility-type field, never a hand-maintained list. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error. Data current as of August 2026.