A government hospital is a place for intensive care and short or long-term medical treatment open to all sorts of patients, which is operated by a governmental body or by an organization belonging to a government. This does not include military or veterans' hospitals.

The operating body is governmental, either directly or through an organization it owns. National, regional, and municipal operators can all fit that description.

Military and veterans hospitals retain their separate patient-group distinctions. Government operation alone does not override those explicit exclusions.