The Luxembourg hospital, read through the data

The Carte sanitaire is the report the Observatoire national de la santé publishes every two years to plan hospital capacity. This reuse draws out five main themes, all recomputed from the open data.

In 1986 the country had 36 hospital establishments; by 2025 only 13 remain, consolidated through a long series of mergers. Four large hospital centres hold most of the beds; specialised establishments (cardiology, neuropsychiatry, rehabilitation, radiotherapy, palliative care) round out the offering. In all, 2,686 installed beds.

With 3.9 hospital beds per 1,000 inhabitants, Luxembourg sits at the bottom of the European ranking, far from France and Belgium (5.5) or Germany (7.7). This is not a shortage: it is the flip side of a young population (15% aged 65 and over, the lowest share in the Union) and of a demographic that quickly inflates the denominator. The ratio in fact fell from 5.15 to 4.0 between 2012 and 2022: beds stayed stable, the population surged.

The link is explicit in the report: few beds per inhabitant is sustainable as long as the population stays young. The ageing ahead, even if moderate in Luxembourg, shifts that balance point, exactly the long-term risk that budget-lu also documents on the public-finances side.

The hospital law sets a ceiling of "planned" beds; the ministry "authorises" a share of them; establishments "install" a share again. In 2025, 88.2% of the planned maximum is authorised, and 96.6% of authorised beds are installed, i.e. 2,686 beds out of a 3,153 ceiling. The gap plays out mainly on acute beds.

The number of hospital doctors has grown by … since 2014. But the striking figure is elsewhere: of the … employees in the hospital sector, … live outside Luxembourg. The care workforce is today half cross-border, driven mainly by France (staff … since 2014).

This reliance on the cross-border labour pool overlaps the labour market and the economic fabric already mapped in the series: the Luxembourg hospital does not run without the Greater Region.

The heavy-imaging fleet is growing: … MRI and … CT scanners installed at national level in 2025, plus … mammographs. Relative to population, Luxembourg is around the OECD average, with a strongly CT-oriented profile compared with MRI.