There are numerous types of locations in the United States where individuals can seek care. Locations of care depends on the needs of the patient, which could be either be long term care or short term care. There are four different types of hospitals. According to Goldsteen and Goldsteen (2013), “hospitals are classified as general, special, rehabilitation, and chronic disease, and psychiatry” (pg.37). The primary function of a general hospital is providing patients with services to treat a variety of medical conditions. Special Hospitals are facilities that treat patients with specified medical conditions, which could either be surgical or nonsurgical conditions. Rehabilitation and chronic disease hospitals have services for handicapped and disabled patients who require restorative services. Lastly, psychiatric hospitals provide services to patients that have psychiatric illnesses. Hospitals can also be either inpatient or outpatient, meaning a patient can either stay overnight with the supervision of a medical professional, based on their diagnosis, or they can just go for a brief annual checkup and be home in a couple of hours. Hospitals also provide emergency room services. The most common reasons why individuals go to the ER are for symptoms such as stomach aches, chest pains, fever, back pains etc. The ER provides care for critically ill patients and injured patients, true emergencies (Goldsteen & Goldsteen, 2013, p. 62). Another location of care is Ambulatory care. …show more content…
Ambulatory care or outpatient care is short-term care institutions, such as dialysis clinics, ambulatory surgical centers, offices of physicians, etc. In 2007, there were 1.2 million ambulatory patient visits to office-based physicians (Goldsteen & Goldsteen, 2013, p. 56). Ambulatory care is usually where an individual goes for a routine checkup or for a non-serious injury. However, urgent care is classified as an ambulatory care, yet urgent care treats patients with possibly life-threatening injuries or symptoms.
Nursing homes are long-term care institutions that provide housing and medical services to the elderly. In nursing homes, elderly people are sometimes monitored 24/7 if needed. In other nursing homes, the elderly get live on their own and don’t need to be monitored. Hospice care can be considered either short term or long term. Hospice care is a special care for individuals that have a serious illness and only has a limited life expectancy. Hospice care can be available in either inpatient facilities or at homes. All these locations have one thing in common, which is patient care. However, they are all different from one another. For example, the price for each one. If a person has an injury that is not life-threatening, it’s better for the person to go to urgent care than the ER. It will cost much less going to urgent care than the ER. Another reason that differentiates the locations of care is the amount of time an individual can stay. Today, we can find numerous institutions where we can seek care. Hospitals have several different medical professionals that help treat patients. Hospitals use instruments and devices to help save lives every day. With being said, the cost of seeking care in hospitals is extremely high, therefore many individuals only try to go to hospitals when it’s really needed. However, hospitals were not as famous as they are today. Initially, almshouses or poorhouses were the main form of care. They were considered hospitals back in the