Who Buys Hospital Beds? From Hospitals to Home Caregivers

Hospital beds are bought by a surprisingly wide range of buyers, acute care hospitals, nursing homes, assisted living communities, the federal government, and increasingly, ordinary families caring for a loved one at home. If you’re searching for the answer to this question, you’re probably in that last group: a spouse, an adult child, or a family caregiver who has just realized a standard bed no longer meets someone’s needs.

This guide covers every segment of the market for adjustable care beds, explains what drives each type of buyer’s decision, and walks through what home buyers specifically need to know before making a purchase.

Acute Care Hospitals: The Largest Institutional Buyer

The United States has 6,100 hospitals operating 907,216 staffed beds, of which 5,121 are community hospitals holding 775,297 staffed beds.¹ These institutions represent the largest single buyer segment in the hospital bed market.

The way hospitals actually purchase beds, however, may surprise you. Approximately 97% of U.S. hospitals belong to a Group Purchasing Organization (GPO), a collective body that negotiates supply contracts on behalf of member institutions.² Vendors who want to sell to hospitals must typically earn a GPO contract before any individual hospital can order from them. The two largest GPOs cover enormous shares of the market: Vizient holds contracts covering 468,309 staffed beds, while Premier covers 333,069 beds, together representing roughly 60% of all U.S. hospital beds under just two contract structures.³

This purchasing architecture matters for understanding what “hospital grade” actually means. Beds evaluated through GPO contracts are tested for clinical performance, infection control, staff ergonomics, and durability under heavy institutional use. Those standards inform what hospital-certified adjustable beds are built to, and why a bed certified to the International Hospital Standard functions differently from a consumer adjustable bed.

The hospital segment also includes a specialized subset: 79,876 staffed adult critical care (ICU) beds across 4,846 acute hospitals in the U.S.⁴ ICU beds are a distinct product category, they carry monitoring integration, specialized positioning systems, and structural requirements that standard inpatient beds don’t need. These beds are procured separately and represent the highest-specification end of the institutional market.

Nursing Homes and Skilled Nursing Facilities

The second-largest buyer segment is long-term institutional care. The United States has approximately 14,700 nursing homes with 1.6 million licensed beds and 1.2 million residents at any given time.⁵ About 72.4% of nursing homes are for-profit businesses, and roughly 60% are chain-affiliated, meaning purchasing decisions are often made at the corporate level, across multiple facilities, rather than site by site.⁶

Post-pandemic, this segment has been contracting. Between 2019 and 2024, licensed SNF beds declined by 2.5% while estimated operating capacity fell 5%. One in four counties experienced operating capacity declines of 15% or more, particularly affecting rural areas.⁷ For the bed market, that contraction means slightly fewer net new units purchased, but ongoing replacement demand as existing institutional equipment ages out.

Nursing home beds are selected for heavy daily use, ease of disinfection, and caregiver ergonomics during repositioning and transfers. They are not designed with residential aesthetics in mind. This matters for the home buyer: families who have seen a nursing home bed up close often describe it as clinical and institutional, and that impression shapes their expectations, for better or worse, when they start shopping for home equipment.

Assisted Living and Residential Care Communities

Assisted living communities occupy a distinct position in the market. The U.S. has approximately 32,200 residential care communities with 1.3 million licensed beds.⁸ A more specific count identifies 41,465 assisted living communities with roughly 1.4 million licensed beds, of which 57.3% are chain-affiliated and 42.7% are independently owned.⁹

Unlike nursing homes, assisted living communities are largely outside the Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement structure, residents pay privately. That changes the purchasing calculus significantly. Premium senior living operators have driven growing demand for adjustable beds that combine clinical capability with residential aesthetics. A bed in a boutique memory care community needs to prevent falls and support repositioning, but it also needs to look like furniture, not clinical equipment. Residents and their families are paying for a living environment, not a patient room.

This shift toward aesthetically thoughtful care beds didn’t originate in the consumer market, it came from operators who needed to compete on quality of life, not just clinical outcomes. For home buyers, this is relevant context: the market for residential-grade hospital beds that companies like SonderCare serve grew partly from the same demand that premium senior communities expressed first.

The Federal Government as a Hospital Bed Buyer

Federal agencies represent a smaller but notable segment. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs issued a bridge contract specifically for hospital beds and accessories intended for in-home use in 2026, a procurement covering VA beneficiaries who require adjustable beds in their own homes rather than at a VA facility.¹⁰ The Indian Health Service operates inpatient facilities including hospitals with dedicated bed inventories, and Department of Defense military treatment facilities maintain separate procurement channels for inpatient equipment.

Federal purchasing differs from private procurement in one particularly relevant way: a significant portion of federal bed procurement is specifically for in-home deployment. The VA’s active purchasing of home hospital beds for veterans reinforces that these devices are legitimate home medical equipment, not exclusively institutional products.

Home Caregivers and Families: The Fastest-Growing Buyer Segment

This is where the market is moving. The U.S. home durable medical equipment market, which includes home hospital beds as one of its largest product categories, was valued at $13.85 billion in 2023 and is projected to reach $25.76 billion by 2033.¹¹ The primary driver is aging in place: more Americans are living longer in their own homes, managing conditions that once would have required institutional care.

The buyer in this segment is almost never the person who will sleep in the bed. It is a spouse, an adult child, or a sibling, often operating in crisis mode, working through insurance questions while simultaneously managing a hospital discharge or a new diagnosis. Research and purchasing happen simultaneously, under time pressure, with high emotional stakes.

Medicare Part B covers home hospital beds when a physician prescribes one and documents qualifying medical criteria. Different coverage tiers apply to fixed-height, variable-height, semi-electric, and heavy-duty models, each mapped to specific billing codes.¹² But Medicare coverage doesn’t always produce the outcome families need. When Medicare approves a bed, it approves a basic model that meets minimum medical necessity criteria, and families routinely discover that the minimum isn’t sufficient.

The gap between what insurance provides and what a person actually needs is the central frustration that drives private-purchase decisions. Caregivers who have navigated this process describe it plainly. One spouse caring for a partner with advancing Alzheimer’s wrote: “At this point I don’t care what the insurance approves. He basically lives in his bed and I want to get something nice.” Another family member described a Medicare-approved bed where the patient’s feet pressed against the footboard due to inadequate length, causing muscle spasms, “lower quality than his original bed in several respects, but it is what his insurance plan approved.”

Those experiences, real, documented, shared across caregiver forums, represent the specific moment when a family transitions from “what does insurance cover?” to “what does this person actually need?” That transition is the purchase decision SonderCare is designed to serve.

What Triggers the Home Hospital Bed Decision

Understanding who buys home hospital beds also means understanding the specific events that move families from consideration to action.

Hospital or rehab discharge. A physician, social worker, or discharge planner recommends an adjustable care bed before a loved one comes home. The family has days, sometimes hours, to arrange equipment. Caring for an elderly parent after hospital discharge involves rapid decisions across multiple categories simultaneously, and the bed is almost always the most consequential. The time pressure is real: a discharge date is fixed, and families who aren’t prepared scramble.

A fall or near-fall event. Bed-height falls are a leading cause of serious injury in older adults at home. When a family member falls getting in or out of bed, or comes close, the case for a height-adjustable bed becomes immediate and undeniable. The FallSafe ultra-low height feature on the Aura Premium home hospital bed lowers the platform to 10 inches, producing a 17-inch sleeping surface height that dramatically reduces both fall frequency and fall impact severity.

Caregiver back strain. This trigger is underappreciated in most discussions of hospital bed purchases. A family caregiver who repositions, bathes, or transfers a loved one from a bed at fixed residential height is working at an ergonomic disadvantage that accumulates into real physical injury over months. A full-electric adjustable bed raises to caregiver working height during care tasks, protecting the person doing the caregiving as much as the person being cared for. Caregivers who have made the switch often describe the relief in physical terms: “easier on your back” is one of the most consistent phrases across caregiver forums.

The insurance-approved bed is inadequate. When Medicare provides an adjustable bed, it provides the minimum that meets documented medical necessity. Beds that are too short for taller patients, too narrow for larger frames, or only semi-electric (requiring manual cranking for certain adjustments) leave families dissatisfied. This inadequacy is an active purchase trigger for a private upgrade, particularly when the person’s care needs are long-term and the daily reality of that bed’s limitations becomes clear.

A hospice transition. Hospice programs typically include an adjustable bed as part of their standard equipment package. But hospice-provided beds are standard DME models, functional, utilitarian, clinical-looking. Families who want better comfort, more positioning capability, or aesthetics that preserve some sense of a normal home environment for a loved one’s final weeks sometimes choose to supplement or replace the hospice bed privately.

What Home Buyers Need to Know Before Purchasing

If you’re in the home-buyer category, a few decisions matter most before you commit.

Work through the rent-vs-buy calculation honestly. The math depends primarily on how long you’ll need the bed. If the need is three months or less, renting from a DME supplier is likely the more practical path. If the need extends beyond six months, or is indefinite, as with chronic conditions, advancing dementia, or long-term aging in place, ownership almost always costs less over time and delivers significantly better quality. The full framework is in our guide to renting or buying a hospital bed for home.

Understand the difference between institutional DME quality and residential-grade quality. Standard DME beds are built for institutional environments: they’re clinically functional but visually utilitarian, with minimal attention to aesthetics, fabric quality, or how they integrate into a bedroom that is supposed to feel like a home. A residential-grade home hospital bed is built to the same safety certifications but designed to look like premium furniture. The Aura Platinum, with its fully upholstered Slate Gray Crypton fabric side panels, furniture-grade headboard, and hospital-certified positioning system, is the clearest example of what this category offers at the upper end.

Budget realistically and know what each price tier delivers. Entry-level adjustable care beds like the Impulse Residential Bed start at $3,999 and provide head and knee positioning with hi-lo height adjustment. Full hospital-certified models with FallSafe fall prevention, Trendelenburg tilt, Zero Gravity, and residential design start at $6,999. Our hospital bed cost guide breaks down what each price point includes, what trade-offs you make at each level, and how to evaluate total cost of ownership over a five-year period, which is where ownership almost always wins on value.

Know whether private pay is the right path for your situation. Medicare coverage requires a physician prescription, documented medical necessity criteria, and a Medicare-enrolled supplier, and it limits you to the supplier’s available inventory, not the bed you’ve independently researched. Families who want to choose their own model, including premium residential-grade beds, typically purchase privately. Our private pay home hospital bed guide walks through what buying outside of insurance means for cost, selection, and long-term warranty coverage.

Don’t overlook the mattress. One of the most consistent findings from caregivers who have used DME-provided beds is that the included mattress is inadequate. Hospital bed mattresses are a separate purchase decision with real clinical implications, particularly for anyone spending extended time in bed. A pressure-redistribution mattress or an alternating pressure system can make a significant difference in skin integrity and comfort. Factor this into your total budget from the start.

For a complete framework covering every dimension of this purchase, features, certifications, sizing, delivery, and more, start with our expert guide to choosing a home hospital bed.

The Common Thread Across Every Buyer Type

Hospitals buy hospital beds because clinical outcomes depend on having the right equipment in the right configuration for patients who need intensive care. Nursing homes buy them for resident care and staff injury prevention at scale. Senior living communities buy them to deliver premium living experiences without institutional aesthetics. The federal government buys them for veterans and servicemembers, including those living at home.

And families buy them because someone they love needs to be safe, comfortable, and properly cared for, and a standard bed can no longer make that possible.

The specific concerns vary by buyer type. The underlying intent across all of them is the same: give the person who depends on that bed what they actually need.

If you’re working through this decision and want guidance tailored to your specific situation, a SonderCare bed expert can help you evaluate options without pressure. Contact our team, most questions can be answered in a single conversation.

References

1. American Hospital Association. “Fast Facts on U.S. Hospitals, 2026.” Published February 5, 2026. https://www.aha.org/statistics/fast-facts-us-hospitals

2. Definitive Healthcare. “Top 10 GPOs by Staffed Beds in U.S. Hospitals.” Published October 24, 2025.

3. Definitive Healthcare. “Top 10 GPOs by Staffed Beds in U.S. Hospitals.” Published October 24, 2025. 

4. Kempker JA, Kramer MR, Lively TL, et al. “U.S. Adult Critical Care Beds Per Capita: A 2021 County-Level Cross-Sectional Study.” Critical Care Explorations. 2023;5(3): e0868. doi:10.1097/CCE.0000000000000868. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9970269/

5. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics. “FastStats: Nursing Home Care.” https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/nursing-home-care.htm

6. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. “The National Imperative to Improve Nursing Home Quality: Honoring Our Commitment to Residents, Families, and Staff.” Chapter: Evolution and Landscape of Nursing Home Care. Washington, DC: National Academies Press; 2022. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK584647/

7. McGarry BE, Grabowski DC, Barnett ML. “Changes in US Skilled Nursing Facility Capacity Following the COVID-19 Pandemic.” JAMA Internal Medicine. 2026. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/article-abstract/2843861

8. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics. “FastStats: Residential Care Community.” https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/residential-care-communities.htm

9. American Health Care Association / National Center for Assisted Living. “Assisted Living Facts & Figures.” https://www.ahcancal.org/Assisted-Living/Facts-and-Figures/Pages/default.aspx

10. HigherGov. “Hospital Beds and Accessories for In Home Use, Bridge Contract” (Solicitation 36C10G26D0007). U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, 2026. https://www.highergov.com/contract-opportunity/hospital-beds-and-accessories-for-in-home-use-br-36c10g26d0007-u-4212a/

11. Nova One Advisor. “U.S. Home Durable Medical Equipment Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report.” 2024. https://www.novaoneadvisor.com/report/us-home-durable-medical-equipment-market

12. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. “Hospital Beds & Accessories: A Compliance Guide for DME Suppliers.” Updated February 2026. https://www.cms.gov/medicare/coding-billing/durable-medical-equipment-dme/hospital-beds-accessories