I'd appreciate feedback on these columns, particuarly if you get different results or you don't agree with something I've said.

Querying a hospital will show you (1) the total # of beds (2) the current # of patients, (3) the # of doctors, and (4) a letter grade.

According to the Dargahi/Bremer book , the number of patients is based on population and the number of beds. They also tell you that one hospital can service up to 25,000 sims. Is this good advice? Let's check it out.

After some experimentation with various numbers of hospitals I determined that to get an "A" requires at least 1 hospital for every 15,000 sims. As the number of sims per hospital climbs into the 16K-18K range your grade will drop to a "B". 19K-22K will get you a "C" and 23K will get you a "D".

As far as advisor comments, your pleasent-looking hospital adminstrator will give you the "trim, efficient, and responsive" comment until your grade drops to a "C". At this point she switches to "adequate". Unlike the Police Chief, who gets "out of control", the worst comment this nice lady will give you is that your city "could use more hospitals". You really have to not be paying attention to your grades to get this comment since even a D- will get you an "adequate" comment.

The capacity of your hospital system does not affect your grade. Its the number of patients per hospital that matters, not how full the building is. So if you are short on funds, build the extra hospital but cut back a bit on the funding.

The best evidence of this point is that while a city loaded into the DOS version will show 600 beds, the same city in Windows will show 1000 beds. The grade is the same in both versions however since it's tied to patients not capacity. It's probably not coincidental however, that building enough hospitals to get the # of patients down to below 600 per building, will also give you an A. It's only in the Windows version, with its larger buildings, that you can have extra room but still have a low grade. Now you know why; they didn't change the grading formula when they came out with the Windows version.

In summary, a 100,000 city only needs 5 or 6 hospitals. Compared to police stations they are not much of a burden; either in the number needed or the annual operating cost. So build those hospitals and watch your "LE" number creep up. (Assuming you don't kill off your sims with high pollution levels!)