As of 1999 there were 81 counties in the region that had no hospitals and 203 had a single hospital.
Some are small local charities working with a single hospital or university.
As Meyers is quick to note, two are based on small samples, and all come from a single hospital.
But this is the first time a single hospital has tried to determine what can be gleaned from its cases.
Closing a single, 300-bed hospital could potentially save much more money than taking 30 beds from each of 10 hospitals.
There was a single hospital for the town.
His Government has not built a single hospital in its 25 years.
"Two hundred died in a single day at a single hospital."
It is now part of a single 1,519-bed hospital with two main campuses.
Chief executives of single private hospitals may earn two or three times that much.