Your nearest hospital is not the whole answer

"How far is the nearest hospital?" is one of the first questions people ask about a new area, especially with young children or older parents. It's a reasonable question, but the nearest hospital isn't always the one that matters.

Not every hospital has an A&E

A building called a hospital might be a community hospital with a few wards, a specialist unit, or a private clinic. Many don't have a full emergency department.

The NHS runs several kinds of urgent care:

• A&E (emergency departments) for serious and life-threatening problems.
• Urgent treatment centres for things that need attention the same day but aren't emergencies, like sprains, minor burns or cuts that need stitches.
• Minor injuries units, which are similar and often have more limited hours.

When you look at an area, check which of these is nearest, not just which hospital. Our hospitals near me tool lists NHS hospitals around a postcode from the NHS organisation register, with their CQC ratings where they've been inspected.

The ambulance may drive past the nearest one

For some emergencies, including many strokes, heart attacks and major injuries, ambulance crews take patients to a specialist centre rather than the closest hospital, because that's where the right team is. That can mean a longer journey on purpose.

So a hospital around the corner is reassuring, but it doesn't guarantee that's where you'd be treated for everything. If someone in the family has a specific condition, it's worth finding out which hospital provides that care for the new area.

Reading a CQC rating

The Care Quality Commission inspects hospitals in England and rates them Outstanding, Good, Requires improvement or Inadequate. Two things to keep in mind.

Check the date. A rating reflects the inspection it came from, and some inspections were a while ago. A hospital may have improved or slipped since.

Look beneath the headline. A hospital's overall rating combines several services. Urgent and emergency care might be rated differently from maternity, for example. If one service matters to you, read that part of the report on the CQC website.

CQC covers England. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have their own inspection bodies, so ratings for hospitals there come from different places, or aren't shown by us at all. We say which.

What I'd check

For a family move, I look at three things: the nearest A&E and how long it takes to get there at a busy time of day, the nearest urgent treatment centre, and the nearest GP surgery taking new patients. The last one affects everyday life far more than the hospital does. Our GP tool covers that.

And for anything urgent that isn't an emergency, NHS 111 will point you to the right place, wherever you've moved to.