National Hospital Week 2025: Appreciation and Awareness

Houses with a strong foundation are said to have “good bones.” And like any of the homes within its borders, a state similarly needs structural integrity to stand strong.

The Texas Hospital Association celebrates National Hospital Week each year in May because hospitals are the bones of Texas – supporting and protecting its people, and shaping the state’s vitality, productivity and character.

National Hospital Week kicked off Sunday and runs through this Saturday, May 17. THA is using this annual week of recognition to celebrate the hospitals and clinics that make up Texas’ skeletal system. The importance of doing so is heightened in a landscape where data continue to show that hospitals – in Texas and elsewhere – face financial struggles that raise questions about or threaten their long-term sustainability.

“Recognizing the wide-reaching impact of hospitals continues to take on more and more importance as our facilities face mounting challenge after mounting challenge,” said THA President/CEO John Hawkins. “Hospital Week is a time for appreciation of hospitals and clinics all over Texas that keep our state healthy and thriving. But it’s also a time to spread awareness of the pain points in our industry, from attrition in our workforce to increasing labor costs and total expenses that are growing faster than inflation.”

THA invites its member hospitals, health care workers and community members all of Texas to join in celebrating hospitals and raising awareness of these issues. Resources to participate can be found on THA’s Hospital Week website.

2025 Hospital Week banner - Texas Hospital Association

Hospital Week Resources

We invite hospitals, health care workers and the community members they serve to participate in Hospital Week on social media to heighten awareness and show appreciation for Texas hospitals and health care workers.

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Saving Lives, Providing Livelihoods

The roots of Hospital Week go back more than a century. It began as a single day of observance – Hospital Day, naturally – in 1921, when a group of medical professionals spearheaded its founding on May 12, Florence Nightingale’s birthday. Upon THA’s founding in 1930, THA joined the American Hospital Association in commemorating the day. AHA expanded Hospital Day into a full week beginning in 1953.

While the everyday import of hospitals is evident to most – just about everyone has been the recipient of needed hospital care or knows someone who has – the general public may be less aware of the ripple effects hospitals have on economic well-being. But those impacts are just as well-documented.

“When people think about hospitals, they may not always go beyond the fact that we treat and heal the sick and injured. But healthy Texans are productive Texans – and even beyond that, our facilities are employment engines in their communities,” Hawkins said. “They’re often a community’s No. 1 employer, and a strong local hospital is a prerequisite for a strong local economy.”

AHA data from 2020, for instance, show that Texas hospitals provided approximately one of every 12 jobs in the state. One hospital job was shown to create a total of 2.6 total Texas jobs, according to AHA data, and Texas hospitals generated more than $190 billion in economic activity in 2020.

In 2022, Texas hospitals reported more than 445,000 employees on their payroll – including more than 358,000 full-time workers, and not including thousands of contracted staff and physicians holding privileges at these facilities.

New Light on the Struggles

But appreciation of the breadth of hospitals’ impact must go hand in hand of with an appreciation of what they’re facing in today’s volatile and uncertain health care landscape: strains, struggles and even potential peril.

AHA’s new report, The Cost of Caring: Challenges Facing America’s Hospitals in 2025, provides some of the latest data points on what the report calls “a perfect storm of financial pressures” on facilities across the U.S.: “persistent cost growth, inadequate reimbursement, and shifting care patterns driven by both policy changes and an older, sicker population with more complex, chronic conditions.” Some of AHA’s key findings:

Labor now accounts for 56% of hospital expenses, eating up $890 billion in 2024. Hospitals continue to offer competitive wages in the midst of ongoing workforce shortages, with advertised salaries for registered nurses growing 26.6% faster than inflation over the past four years.
Meanwhile, Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements continue not to match the cost of care: between fiscal years 2022 and 2024, general inflation rose by 14%, but Medicare net inpatient payment rates increased by just 5%. Medicare covered just 83 cents of every dollar of hospital spending in 2023.
Higher utilization and acuity are increasing cost-drivers, especially among chronic disease patients. Total spending on heart failure, acute renal failure and diabetes outgrew patient encounters per capita for each of those three conditions between 2010 and 2019.

The AHA data sheds enhanced light on general issues previously raised through a Texas-specific 2022 report commissioned by THA and assembled by Kaufman Hall. That study found that nearly one out of every 10 Texas hospitals was at serious risk of closure, with more than one in four rural hospitals facing that risk.

These issues are especially salient in light of current negotiations in Congress over a budget reconciliation bill being advanced by Republican leadership in which deep cuts to Medicaid are expected. THA has urged a careful, do-no-harm approach to federal health programs, mindful of upsets to the system and reductions in services that would result if deep cuts to funding are enacted.

Meanwhile, as Hospital Week unfolds, THA urges the general public to be mindful of the full picture of what it means to operate and be part of a hospital in 2025 – both recognizing the foundation that hospitals provide for communities, and what they need to keep that foundation solidified.