HCA Healthcare, Inc. (HCA)

HCA Healthcare owns and operates hospitals and other care facilities. At 31 December 2025 it ran 190 hospitals, made up of 179 general acute care hospitals, seven behavioral hospitals and four rehabilitation hospitals, along with 121 freestanding ambulatory surgery centres and 31 freestanding endoscopy centres. The facilities sit in 19 states and England. The company commenced operations in 1968 through its predecessors, was incorporated in Delaware in October 2010 and is based in Nashville, Tennessee.

The hospitals

The 179 general acute care hospitals had 50,436 licensed beds at 31 December 2025. They provide medical and surgical services including inpatient care, intensive care, cardiac care, diagnostic services and emergency services, and outpatient services including outpatient surgery, laboratory, radiology, respiratory therapy, cardiology and physical therapy. They cover specialties such as internal medicine, general surgery, cardiology, oncology, neurosurgery, orthopedics and obstetrics. Each hospital has an organised medical staff and a local board of trustees or governing board drawn from the community. The seven behavioral hospitals had 714 licensed beds and provide child, adolescent and adult psychiatric care and alcohol and drug abuse treatment and counselling.

Care outside the hospital

Outpatient and ancillary services are delivered through the acute care hospitals themselves and through ambulatory surgery centres, freestanding emergency care facilities, urgent care facilities, walk-in clinics, physician practices, diagnostic centres, home health agencies, hospices and rehabilitation facilities.

Who pays

Payment for patient services comes from the federal government through Medicare, from state governments through Medicaid and similar programmes, from managed care plans including those offered through federal and state health insurance marketplaces, from private insurers and directly from patients. By share of revenues in 2025, managed care and other insurers were 48.9%, managed Medicare 17.8%, Medicare 14.9%, Medicaid 7.8%, managed Medicaid 4.9%, international managed care and other insurers 2.5% and other, including uninsured patients, 3.2%. Medicare covers people aged 65 and over, some disabled people and people with end-stage renal disease or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis; Medicaid is a federal-state programme run by the states for qualifying low-income individuals. All of the company's general acute care hospitals in the United States are enrolled in both. The filing notes that amounts received under Medicare and Medicaid are generally much less than established hospital gross charges for the same services.

Strategy

The stated aim is to be the health care system of choice in the communities served by building comprehensive local networks and supporting them with enterprise expertise and scale. The growth agenda includes growing in existing markets, improving clinical, operational and satisfaction measures, attracting physicians and other health care professionals, developing more services, widening access and coordinating care across the network.

People

The workforce was approximately 320,000 employees at 31 December 2025, including approximately 90,000 part-time and as-needed employees. Human capital matters are overseen by the board and its committees through regular reporting from management and advisers.

From HCA Healthcare's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended 31 December 2025. The filing