Couldn't find more recent data. Was talking with a friend recently about their idea of moving to a rural location and we were brainstorming what the benefits and downsides are.
this post was submitted on 10 May 2025
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Note about Norway: I think we have another yellow section now (<50%) after a couple of hospitals closed down. But that's because medical emergencies are usually airlifted. Every rural village has an emergency helicopter landing spot.
EDIT: And I think the bar for sending out a helicopter is pretty low. I've been flown to the hospital like that myself - while the injuries were obviously serious, I don't think anyone on any level considered them life threatening.
This is usually the case in Finland too thankfully. I guess it would be interesting to see some kind of emergency service vehicles/transport per 1000 people stats as well since that's going to be real problem if emergency service resources are too scarce.
Your brain is better at associating around the topic than mine. I'm sitting here hoping we can see a showdown in The 2026 Nordic Rural Medevac Championship.
Don't give my brain too much credit: it threw my glasses into the trash instead of the dirty tissue in my other hand few days ago!
Also holy shit that's a thing?! Sounds like the kind of sports I'd watch!
It's definitely NOT a thing. But it absolutely should be.
100% agree. We need this.
Speaking of Finland, doesn’t the northern part of the map look way too green? Rovaniemi has one hospital, and about 36% of the population of the region should be within 1 h driving distance. If you limit it to just 15 min, it might be closer to 10-20% instead.
If you include all the other health services, such as clinics, then the numbers could add up. There are still many small villages that have no health services of any kind.
It does, and the dataset does mention that the definition of "hospital" here varies country to country.
It's unfortunate that NUTS 3 Regions in Finland bunch up whole lapland into one big area (maakunta tasolla koko lappi on yksi iso maakunta). I believe the population density is bunched up around cities so that's why we don't actually see the true value for individual areas.