Healthcare evaluates the availability and quality of related facilities and services in each Swiss commune.
Categories: health_pois (100%)
A high score for Healthcare means excellent access to doctors, clinics, and hospitals. Conversely, a low score indicates more limited healthcare access. This criterion is measured using official Swiss data (FSO, geo.admin.ch) and open data (OpenStreetMap).
The Healthcare criterion is particularly important for retirees (weight: 95%) and families (70%). young professionals place less emphasis on it (20%), prioritizing other criteria.
Access to healthcare measures the density and proximity of four facility types: general practitioners and specialists, clinics, hospitals, and medical centres. VivaMap extracts these points from OpenStreetMap and weights them by facility type and distance from the hexagon centroid — a GP practice 500 m away contributes far more than a regional hospital 12 km out. The weighting coefficients are described on the methodology page.
Switzerland has one of Europe's best-resourced healthcare systems in medical density: around 4.3 doctors per 1,000 inhabitants according to the FOPH, versus a European average of 3.8. Regional disparities remain pronounced, however. Alpine and peripheral communes may rely on a single GP practice with weeks-long waits for new patients. Urban centres — Zurich, Geneva, Basel, Bern, Lausanne — concentrate medical universities, reference hospitals, and specialist clinics. This distribution logically follows population centres but creates significant geographic inequalities for specialist care.
Geographic proximity becomes decisive with age and for people managing chronic conditions (diabetes, cardiovascular disease, oncology). A specialist appointment reachable in 15 minutes is fundamentally different from one requiring 90 minutes of travel — a difference that affects treatment adherence and follow-up quality. For families with young children, the availability of a paediatrician or paediatric emergency service within a reasonable radius is also an explicit residential-choice criterion.
An important qualification: this score measures physical accessibility, not clinical quality. In Switzerland, clinical quality is remarkably uniform thanks to federal accreditations (KVGG, H+ standards) and cantonal quality commissions. Clinical quality should therefore not weigh in the decision — it is accessibility that truly differentiates communes.
The network is supplemented by helicopter emergency medicine. The REGA (Swiss Air-Rescue) covers the entire territory within 15 minutes in favourable weather, providing a safety net for remote alpine communes where a low score reflects the absence of local practices rather than genuinely deficient access in life-threatening emergencies.
In practice, it is worth examining the health score not just at the communal level but on the hexagon map. A commune with a middling score can be significantly heterogeneous: hexagons near a clinic or hospital score best, while those at the opposite end of the communal footprint score considerably lower. For households with frequent care needs, this intra-communal variance is often more decision-relevant than the communal average.
Switzerland spends around 12% of GDP on health — the highest ratio in Europe after Germany (12.5%) and France (12%). Its medical density (4.3 per 1,000) exceeds Spain (3.9), the United Kingdom (3.0), and the Netherlands (3.6), though it slightly trails Germany (4.5) and Austria (5.4). The average distance to an acute-care hospital is under 10 km for 85% of the Swiss population — comparable to Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands, but better than rural France or Southern Italy.
On open data, OSM mapping of healthcare facilities is exceptionally complete in Switzerland, Germany, and the Netherlands, thanks to active communities and transparent public registers. France has the RPU (Répertoire partagé des professionnels de santé) via data.gouv.fr — comprehensive coverage but requiring geodetic cleaning. Italy publishes its Repertorio delle strutture sanitarie via the Ministry of Health, with less complete geodata coverage in the Mezzogiorno. In Switzerland, the absence of a single freely accessible national register of healthcare professionals is the main limitation — hence OpenStreetMap's use as a proxy.
The hedonic literature on healthcare access and property values is less extensive than for noise or nature, but several studies converge. For retirement-age households, each additional minute of travel to the nearest doctor corresponds to an estimated price discount of 0.5 to 1.0% on sale price, according to BIS (Bank for International Settlements) research on Swiss real-estate markets. For families with young children, the proximity of a medical crèche or paediatrician within walking distance generates a comparable premium of 2 to 4% on the rental market.
The impact is amplified in mountain communes, where GPs are often the only primary-care providers. The scarcity of practices — documented in the cantons of Uri, Obwald, and Glarus — is beginning to translate into price discounts, a signal unprecedented in a country where medical shortages were previously unknown. A health score below 4/10 in a commune remote from a cantonal centre should be factored into total cost-of-living calculations: medical travel can represent CHF 1,000 to 3,000 per year for a household with children or a person in regular medical follow-up.
On VivaMap's 0–10 scale, here is how to read the healthcare access score:
This score should be read in light of the household profile. For a healthy couple in their thirties, a 4/10 is often acceptable. For a senior in cardiology follow-up or a family with three young children, a score below 6/10 warrants a careful review of actual distances on the interactive map.
Data: FSO, geo.admin.ch, OSM — Scores normalised 0-10