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HCA Healthcare

American healthcare facilities company

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 2, 2026
Entity authorityQ1630431 ↗
Source-derived summary

HCA Healthcare, Inc. (historically known as Hospital Corporation of America) is an American global for-profit operator of health care facilities that was founded in 1968. It is based in Nashville, Tennessee, and, as of May 2020, owned and operated 186 hospitals and approximately 2,400 sites of care, including surgery centers, freestanding emergency rooms, urgent care centers and physician clinics in 20 states and the United Kingdom. As of 2024, HCA Healthcare is ranked #61 on the Fortune 500 rankings of the largest United States corporations by total revenue. In the 1990s, the company engaged in illegal accounting and other crimes that resulted in the payment of more than $2 billion in federal fines and other penalties, and the dismissal of the CEO Rick Scott by the board of directors.

History

Early years

The Hospital Corporation of America (HCA) was founded in 1968 in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas F. Frist Sr., Thomas F. Frist Jr. and Jack C. Massey. The founders envisioned a company that would bring together hospitals to deliver patient-focused care while using the combined resources of the organization to strengthen hospitals and improve the practice of medicine. The company began with Nashville's Park View Hospital, which the elder Frist had founded in 1960 with other doctors and where he was chief executive.

The company included 11 hospitals when it filed its initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in 1969 and had 26 hospitals and 3,000 beds by the end of the year.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “HCA Healthcare” as american healthcare facilities company. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA strong contextual entry point for chronology, institutions and public events when official records are distinguished from later interpretation. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1968, 2020, 2024, 1960—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1968-01-01. The account is most persuasive where Healthcare, American and healthcare can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as american healthcare facilities company. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1630431. VIAF identifies the subject as 151354700. The Library of Congress control number is n86084403. 2 of 6 selected statements include explicit references; 3 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1968, 2020, 2024 and 1960.

Critical limits

Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “HCA Healthcare”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow HCA Healthcare primary sources, HCA Healthcare archive and Healthcare research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “HCA Healthcare”?
  2. Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
  3. Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “HCA Healthcare” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.