Sanford Health is a nonprofit integrated health system headquartered in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and the largest rural health system in the United States. It operates 56 hospitals, 288 clinic locations, and 147 senior care facilities across South Dakota, North Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Wyoming, and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. The organisation employs 55,000 people, including 4,000 physicians and advanced practice providers, and serves more than 2 million patients annually.
Clinical activity across the network is substantial. Sanford handles 10.6 million outpatient and clinic visits, 378,635 emergency department visits, 259,122 surgeries and procedures, and 119,167 inpatient admissions each year. The system also supports nearly 415,000 health plan members and records approximately 13,675 births annually. Specialty care is organised around designated Centers of Excellence covering cancer, children's health, cardiology, orthopedics and sports medicine, and women's health.
Sanford operates a virtual care programme spanning 78 specialties, extending access to specialist services across its predominantly rural geography. Its clinical research programme is similarly active, with nearly 1,500 clinical trials and studies underway at any given time, encompassing both interventional and observational work. The system's mission is stated as "to care, comfort and cure," with an explicit focus on delivering advanced medical services to communities in America's heartland.
