Hospital Santo Tomas, Public hospital in Panama City, Panama.

Hospital Santo Tomas is a public medical facility in Panama City with more than 600 beds across specialized departments. The institution provides emergency care, blood banking services, clinical laboratory work, and dedicated maternal and internal medicine units.

The first written record is a letter of 11 April 1703 from Bishop Juan de Argüelles to King Philip V, reporting a hospice he had opened on 22 September 1702, the feast of Saint Thomas of Villanova, for poor women with nowhere to go. A replacement was begun in 1819 on Avenida B, and the present complex on Avenida Balboa was inaugurated on 1 September 1924 under President Belisario Porras, designed by the American architect James Cady Wright. Its pediatric and oncology wards later became the Hospital del Niño and the Instituto Oncológico Nacional.

The hospital and its gardens were declared national historical monuments by Law 26 of 1986. Its nickname, "the white elephant," began as a criticism of President Belisario Porras's large project and is now used without derision. The pediatric ward became the Hospital del Niño Dr. José Renán Esquivel, and the oncology ward became the Instituto Oncológico Nacional.

The complex sits on Avenida Balboa on 5 hectares, of which 2 were laid out as gardens; the original facade buildings and gardens are national historic monuments under Law 26 of 1986. It is a Level I trauma centre and the country's main teaching hospital, admitting patients aged 15 and over and referring cancer cases to the Instituto Oncológico Nacional. Enter from Avenida Balboa; the low brick-and-stone wall with eight flagpoles marks the front.

The hospital's nickname, "the white elephant", comes from political opponents who called the 1924 complex too large for a small country. President Belisario Porras, who built it, could not find a bed there in his final days and died in a private hospital in August 1942. The name is still used, no longer as an insult.