What is the Total Area of US Hospitals?

Friends:

For part of a research project I am working on to propose a change to the National Electrical Code, I need to estimate the total square footage of hospital buildings in the United States.?

I want to propose a model for this here, and get your feedback. I am doing this in the hope that the exercise might be at least interesting, and maybe helpful to others.?

First, we know the total number of hospitals, and the total number of (staffed! and this is important) beds from the American Hospital Association. See?HERE.?

I have tried to think about how to get from this to a total square footage. I can think of two ways.?

First, we could estimate the average square footage of a US Hospital. This, it strikes me, could be very difficult.?If someone has a good data source on this, i would appreciate it.

The other thing we could do is to estimate an average of square footage per bed. I have heard estimates of everything from 1800 to 3000 sf/bed in particular hospitals.?This post?suggests 2000 to 2250. To be conservative (in this case, a higher number is the conservative one), we could estimate total US beds - 919,649 - times 2250 sf/bed = 2,069,210,250 total sf. I am not a medical planner, and I am not sure how to get a better estimate. And, this ignores the issue of non-staffed beds, which I don't know how to deal with. I would really appreciate any insights people might have.

Thank you all!!?