Hill-Burton Hospital Survey & Construction Act

The Hospital Survey and Construction Act, commonly known as the Hill–Burton Act, is a U.S. federal law passed in 1946 and enacted on July 13, 1946. It was sponsored by Senator Harold Burton of Ohio and Senator Lister Hill of Alabama.

The Hill-Burton Act provided federal grants to states for the construction of new community hospitals (nonfederal, short-stay hospitals) that would be operated on a nonprofit basis. This legislation required that each state develop and upgrade, annually, a plan for health facility construction based on bed-to-population ratios, which became the basis for the allocation of federal construction grants to the states.