Non-Hospital vs. Acute Hospital Comparison.
Health care can be defined as overnight patient care that requires supervision of the health condition of a patient. Non-hospital care refers to care that does not require overnight stays in hospitals, and can be managed during patient’s visits to a hospital (Griffin, 2008). A non-hospital health care facility operates under four elements; curative medicine, disease prevention, health promotion, and rehabilitation. However, these functions or elements differ in various non-hospital care providers (Singh, 2010).
Some non-hospital health care facilities specialize on treatment, others on rehabilitation while others specialize on disease prevention. In a non-hospital care facility, there lacks a clear classification of the functions, and uniformity in the organizational structures (Griffin, 2008). An example is the Sinai Hospital based in Baltimore, which apart from the provision of clinical facilities has a rehabilitation center, gynecology program, pediatrics and a teaching hospital. Most of these facilities are set up to encompass a community need. Current accreditation programs provide for a shift from the primary medical care in non-hospital facilities to primary health care, which involves attendance by medical professionals in the four elements (Singh, 2010).
Acute health care facilities, on the other hand, refer to admission of patients with complex medical conditions. They provide services for critical conditions, which require daily observations and treatment. The facilities provide necessary treatments for severe episodes of illness for a given period with an intention of discharging the patients as soon as they become stable. The care may require a stay in Intensive Care Units, emergency departments, ambulatory surgery centers or urgent care centers, depending on the nature of illness.
Contrary to non-hospital facilities, acute care hospitals require assistance from surgery, diagnostic services, and patient follow ups in community out-patient health services. Their requirements may be varied depending on states, but most of them offer nursing, medical, surgery, laboratory, pharmaceutical, radiology and x-rays, anesthesia, and dietary services among others (Wolper, 2004).
Most non-hospital care providers are government owned while acute care hospitals are classified by; ownership i.e. private or government owned, religious affiliations i.e. sectarian or non sectarian and academic affiliations i.e. teaching or non-teaching (Griffin, 2008). Acute care hospitals come in different levels i.e. primary, secondary or tertiary care providers. Their licensing category is based on these three levels, which determine the services provided at each hospital. This is in contrary to non-hospital health facilities, which do not have a licensing category.
A primary acute health facility provides care for patients suffering from common disorders. A secondary acute hospital provides specialty care while a tertiary acute care hospital provides care to complex issues transferred from the other two categories (Singh, 2010). An example is the New-York Presbyterian Hospital, which is a non-profit health care institution in New York. The hospital provides for emergency services such as surgery, radiotherapies, and critical health conditions. It is a tertiary acute health service, which treats patients referred from other hospitals, as well as those reported as emergencies such as accident victims.
A significant difference between these two health care service providers is on the duration that patients spend either under observance or treatment. Diagnostic services provided by non-hospital health facilities may take a longer time as compared to acute services, which may take a maximum of five to seven days. Take an instance of surgical cases; such patients are treated under acute health so that their conditions are closely monitored then discharged after improvement. This is in contrary to non-health care services such as rehabilitations, which may take a substantial amount of time before patients recovers totally (Wolper, 2004).
Reference.
Griffin, D. (2008). Outside the hospital: The delivery of health care in non-hospital settings. Sudbury, Mass: Jones and Bartlett.
Singh, D. A. (2010). Effective management of long-term care facilities. Sudbury, Mass: Jones and Bartlett Publishers.
Wolper, L. F. (2004). Health care administration: Planning, implementing, and managing organized delivery systems. Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett Publishers.
