Hospital
A hospital is a healthcare institution providing patient treatment with specialized health science and auxiliary healthcare staff and medical equipment. The best-known type of hospital is the general hospital, which typically has an emergency department to treat urgent health problems ranging from fire and accident victims to a sudden illness. A district hospital typically is the major health care facility in its region, with many beds for intensive care and additional beds for patients who need long-term care.
Specialized hospitals include trauma centers, rehabilitation hospitals, children's hospitals, geriatric hospitals, and hospitals for specific medical needs, such as psychiatric hospitals for psychiatric treatment and other disease-specific categories. Specialized hospitals can help reduce health care costs compared to general hospitals. Hospitals are classified as general, specialty, or government depending on the sources of income received.
A teaching hospital campus combines patient care with teaching to health science students, auxiliary healthcare students, and qualified medical graduates completing their postgraduate residencies before licensure to practice. A health science facility smaller than a hospital is generally called a clinic. Hospitals have a range of departments and specialist units such as cardiology. Some hospitals have outpatient departments and some have chronic treatment units. Common support units include a pharmacy, pathology, and radiology. Facilities that combine many health care functions, including general or specialized patient care, teaching, research, and so on, may use the term medical center. This term can also refer to an office complex with various unaffiliated health services or any kind of clinic or hospital.
A large hospital or medical center also often serves as the administrative headquarters of a larger health system which may have multiple sites.
Hospitals are typically funded by public funding, health organizations, health insurance companies, or charities, including direct charitable donations. Historically, hospitals were often founded and funded by Christian religious orders, or by charitable individuals and leaders.
Hospitals are currently staffed by professional physicians, surgeons, nurses, and allied health practitioners. In the past, however, this work was usually performed by the members of founding religious orders or by volunteers. However, there are various Catholic religious orders, such as the Alexians and the Bon Secours Sisters that still focus on hospital ministry in the late 1990s, as well as several other Christian denominations, including the Evangelical-Lutherans and Methodists, which run hospitals. Deaconesses have played a prominent role in healthcare. In accordance with the original meaning of the word, hospitals were original "places of hospitality", and this meaning is still preserved in the names of some institutions such as the Royal Hospital Chelsea, established in 1681 as a retirement and nursing home for veteran soldiers.
Etymology
During the Middle Ages, hospitals served different functions from modern institutions in that they were almshouses for the poor, hostels for pilgrims, or hospital schools. The word "hospital" comes from the Latin hospes, signifying a stranger or foreigner, hence a guest. Another noun derived from this, hospitium came to signify hospitality, that is the relation between guest and shelterer, hospitality, friendliness, and hospitable reception. By metonymy, the Latin word then came to mean a guest-chamber, guest's lodging, an inn. Hospes is thus the root for the English words host ''hospitality, hospice, hostel, and hotel. The latter modern word derives from Latin via the Old French romance word hostel, which developed a silent s'', which letter was eventually removed from the word, the loss of which is signified by a circumflex in the modern French word hôtel. The German word Spital shares similar roots.Types
Some patients go to a hospital just for diagnosis, treatment, or therapy and then leave without staying overnight; while others are "admitted" and stay overnight or for several days or weeks or months. Hospitals are usually distinguished from other types of medical facilities by their ability to admit and care for inpatients whilst the others, which are smaller, are often described as clinics.General and acute care
The best-known type of hospital is the general hospital, also known as an acute-care hospital. These facilities handle many kinds of disease and injury, and normally have an emergency department or trauma center to deal with immediate and urgent threats to health. Larger cities may have several hospitals of varying sizes and facilities. Some hospitals, especially in the United States and Canada, have their own ambulance service.District
A district hospital typically is the major health care facility in its region, with large numbers of beds for intensive care, critical care, and long-term care.In California, "district hospital" refers specifically to a class of healthcare facility created shortly after World War II to address a shortage of hospital beds in many local communities. Even today, district hospitals are the sole public hospitals in 19 of California's counties, and are the sole locally accessible hospital within nine additional counties in which one or more other hospitals are present at a substantial distance from a local community. Twenty-eight of California's rural hospitals and 20 of its critical-access hospitals are district hospitals. They are formed by local municipalities, have boards that are individually elected by their local communities, and exist to serve local needs. They are a particularly important provider of healthcare to uninsured patients and patients with Medi-Cal. In 2012, district hospitals provided $54 million in uncompensated care in California.
Specialized
A specialty hospital is primarily and exclusively dedicated to one or a few related medical specialties. Subtypes include rehabilitation hospitals, children's hospitals, seniors' hospitals, long-term acute care facilities, and hospitals for dealing with specific medical needs such as psychiatric problems, cancer treatment, certain disease categories such as cardiac, oncology, or orthopedic problems, and so forth.In Germany, specialised hospitals are called Fachkrankenhaus; an example is Fachkrankenhaus Coswig. In India, specialty hospitals are known as super-specialty hospitals and are distinguished from multispecialty hospitals which are composed of several specialties.
Specialised hospitals can help reduce health care costs compared to general hospitals. For example, Narayana Health's cardiac unit in Bangalore specialises in cardiac surgery and allows for a significantly greater number of patients. It has 3,000 beds and performs 3,000 paediatric cardiac operations annually, the largest number in the world for such a facility. Surgeons are paid on a fixed salary instead of per operation, thus when the number of procedures increases, the hospital is able to take advantage of economies of scale and reduce its cost per procedure. Each specialist may also become more efficient by working on one procedure like a production line.
Teaching
A teaching hospital delivers healthcare to patients as well as training to prospective medical professionals such as medical students and student nurses. It may be linked to a medical school or nursing school, and may be involved in medical research. Students may also observe clinical work in the hospital.Clinics
Clinics generally provide only outpatient services, but some may have a few inpatient beds and a limited range of services that may otherwise be found in typical hospitals.Departments or wards
A hospital contains one or more wards that house hospital beds for inpatients. It may also have acute services such as an emergency department, operating theatre, and intensive care unit, as well as a range of medical specialty departments. A well-equipped hospital may be classified as a trauma center. They may also have other services such as a hospital pharmacy, radiology, pathology, and medical laboratories. Some hospitals have outpatient departments such as behavioral health services, dentistry, and rehabilitation services.A hospital may also have a department of nursing, headed by a chief nursing officer or director of nursing. This department is responsible for the administration of professional nursing practice, research, and policy for the hospital.
Many units have both a nursing and a medical director that serve as administrators for their respective disciplines within that unit. For example, within an intensive care nursery, a medical director is responsible for physicians and medical care, while the nursing manager is responsible for all the nurses and nursing care.
Support units may include a medical records department, release of information department, technical support, clinical engineering, facilities management, plant operations, dining services, and security departments.