30 Cities With the Best Healthcare in the World

Ramish Cheema

Fri, May 12, 2023, 4:50 PM10 min read

In this piece, we will take a look at the 30 cities with the best healthcare in the world. For more cities, head on over to 5 Cities With the Best Healthcare in the World.

While most public attention is focused on the rapid advances made by consumer technology, the reality is that as time has progressed, several other industries have also made significant advances that have completely transformed them from where they stood even a hundred years ago.

One such sector is the healthcare industry. The simple fact that diseases responsible for taking thousands of lives at the turn of the 20th century are now manageable illnesses today is the biggest illustration of how far the industry has come. Speaking specifically about the U.S., data from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) shows that diseases like pneumonia, tuberculosis, and even diarrhea were among the top ten leading causes of death in America for the first quarter of the 1900s. In fact, 30,500 people of diarrhea alone in the U.S. in 1930, and the figure had stood at 44,562 in 1921. Yet, in a hundred years, or in 2021, diarrhea is not even in the top ten causes of death, and the number of deaths stood at 8,000 in 2018.

At the same time, one of the worst diseases that you can get, diabetes, is also quite under control. Deaths from diabetes had stood at close to 30,000 however, the latest data shows that these have dropped to roughly 25,000. If this decrease does not impress you, consider looking at the devastation that heart diseases have raged. In the early 1900s, hundreds of thousands of people ranging between 300,000 and 700,000 died from heart diseases. However, this figure sat at 173,800 in 2021 quite a large decrease.

Building on this, these advancements aren't for free - just like anything else in this world. Data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services shows that national health spending stood at $4.3 trillion in 2021 after growing by 2.7% annually. This accounted for 18.3% of the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP). Within the four segments of this spending, namely Medicare, Medicaid, private health insurance, and out of pocket spending, out of spending grew the fastest with a growth rate of 10.4%. Medicaid was the second fastest grower, as it grew by 9.2%. In dollar terms, Medicare was the largest segment, as it accounted for $900.8 billion, or close to a trillion dollars. Additionally, looking at the future, health spending is expected to grow at 5.1% between 2021 and 2030, with health spending estimated to account for a larger 19.6% of the GDP in 2030.

Building on this, the U.S. hospital services industry is one of the largest in the world. Research from Grand View Research shows that the segment was worth $1.3 trillion in 2021 and was expected to grow to $1.4 trillion in 2022. From then on until 2030, the market is expected to grow at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.62% to sit at an estimated $2.5 trillion by the end of the forecast period. The firm adds that roughly 40 to 50 million surgical procedures are performed in America every year, with digestive and musculoskeletal surgery making up the largest portion. Naturally, and as we highlighted above heart disease is one of the leading causes of death in America, cardiovascular treatments also account for the largest portion of hospital services, accounting for 20% of the total market. In terms of growth, acute care services will be the fastest growing segment over the forecast period.

Additionally, the coronavirus pandemic was a significant challenge for the hospital industry, which was pushed to the forefront in the fight against one of the deadliest viruses known to humankind. One positive outcome of the virus is the rapid pace of development in the messenger ribonucleic acid (MRNA) vaccines. According to McKinsey, the shift to mRNA appears to be permanent, since mRNA and other similar therapies are seeing an increasing interest by pharma companies. McKinsey's data shows that their share in new drug development efforts has grown from 11% to 21% - which is a new record in terms of growth.

Finally, executives in the hospital industry believe that 2023 will mark another year of recovery for the hospital sector from the coronavirus pandemic. As the virus spread, hospitals were forced to divert resources away from other acute care patients, and executives of Universal Health Services, Inc. (NYSE:UHS) shared their expectations for 2023, outlining that:

Our 2023 operating results forecast, which was provided in last night's release, Envision's 2023 as a year of continued transition into a post-pandemic world. We anticipate that volumes in both segments and acuity in our acute business will continue their recovery trajectory and gradually begin to resemble the patterns we experienced before the pandemic. Similarly, we expect to be able to reduce premium pay by about one-third in 2023 from 2022 levels as we continue to increase hiring rates and reduce turnover as a result of multiple recruitment and retention programs that have been implemented over the last few years. Again, we've assumed these improvements will occur incrementally during the year. But will be partially offset by wage pressures created by a continued shortage of nurses and other clinical personnel and by broader inflationary pressures affecting our other expenses.
We note that in our Acute segment, physician subsidy expense is specifically anticipated to increase by a substantial amount. Other headwinds that are reflected in our 2023 forecast are approximately $100 million in COVID-related reimbursement received in 2022, but phased out in 2023 as well as a reduction of about $30 million in supplemental reimbursement payments as disclosed in our 10-K. Finally, we will incur a significant increase in interest expense in 2023. About three quarters of which was due to rising interest rates and the remainder to increased borrowings. Despite these challenges, we note that some of the operating indicators in early 2023 have been encouraging, especially in our behavioral health business. During the pandemic, we have found the pace of recovery from several of the aforementioned challenges has often been slower than we originally anticipated and have reflected that gradual cadence of recovery in our forecast.

With these details in mind, let's take a look at cities with the best healthcare in the world.

30 Cities With the Best Healthcare in the World

Photo by martha-dominguez-de-gouveia on Unsplash

Our Methodology

To compile our list of the world's best cities for healthcare, we used Newsweek's list of 250 best hospitals in the world. The list was scanned with a fine toothed comb and all the different cities on it were listed down. Then, the number of hospitals in each city was determined, and they were ranked accordingly. The top 30 cities with the best healthcare are listed below.

30 Cities With the Best Healthcare in the World

30. Montreal, Canada

Number of Best Hospitals in the World: 2

Montreal is one of the largest cities in Canada, especially in terms of population. The city houses 1.7 million people, and it was set up in the 17th century.