What Types of Health Facilities Provide Services to Patients?

Health centers are community-based, patient-led organizations that provide affordable, accessible, high-quality primary health care services to individuals and families, including the homeless, farmworkers, public housing residents, and veterans. Outpatient surgical centers, also known as ambulatory surgical centers, allow patients to receive certain surgical procedures outside of the hospital setting. These environments often offer surgery at a lower cost than hospitals and, at the same time, reduce the risk of exposure to infections since patients are there to have surgery, not to recover from illness or illness. Ambulatory surgery centers do not offer diagnostic services or consultation hours.

Instead, they accept patients who have been referred to surgery by a hospital or doctor; they are designed to be “quite a business” when it comes to surgical care. Patients with kidney disease often need regular dialysis treatments. Dialysis is a process that filters and cleans the blood in an artificial way, the work normally done by the functioning kidneys. About 14 percent of Americans have chronic kidney disease.

When the kidneys cannot filter the blood as they should, patients may need dialysis up to three times a week to avoid serious complications. With such high demand, dialysis centers emerged to meet the needs of patients and avoid excessive pressure on hospitals. All the different health centers also offer a wide range of options for those looking for work. If you're interested in a career in health care, you have a lot of options, even at the entry-level. For a sampling of available opportunities, see our article, “11 entry-level healthcare jobs employers want to fill NOW”.

Rehabilitation hospitals provide comprehensive rehabilitation services to patients to alleviate or ameliorate the disabling effects of the disease. These services are characterized by the coordinated provision of care aimed at maximizing patient self-sufficiency. A rehabilitation hospital can be a stand-alone facility or it can be located in a licensed health care facility. Mental health treatment centers sometimes exist as a general institution for any mental health problem, and sometimes they are specialized. Nursing homes, including residential treatment centers and geriatric care centers, are health care institutions that have housing facilities and that are dedicated to providing short- or long-term medical treatment of a general or specialized nature, not offered by hospitals, to hospitalized patients with a wide variety of medical conditions.

Palliative care centers

provide palliative services to terminally ill patients in the patient's home or place of residence, including medical, nursing, social work, volunteer and counseling services.

Family planning services can also include prenatal and postpartum care, other gynecological services such as colposcopy and cryotherapy, and menopausal services. The National Association of Community Health Centers (NACHC) was founded in 1971 to promote comprehensive, efficient, high-quality health care that is accessible, culturally and linguistically competent, community-directed and patient-centered for all. According to the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO), a palliative care patient has a team of care providers comprised of the patient's personal physician, a hospice doctor, nurses, home health aides, social workers, clergy or other counselors and physical or occupational therapists if needed. Others have a mandate that goes beyond offering predominantly curative and rehabilitation care services to include promotion, prevention and education functions as part of a primary health care approach. An independently licensed branch of an ambulatory care center within a 30-mile radius of the authorized ambulatory care center. Since the country's first community health centers opened in 1965, the expansion of the federally supported health center system to more than 1,400 organizations has created an affordable health care option for more than 30 million people. A facility attached to another licensed long-term care facility that provides food, shelter supervised medical care and related services in a home-like setting. A center authorized by the Department of Health to provide apartment type housing dining and assisted living services when needed.

Health facilities which include clinics doctors' offices urgent care centers and ambulatory surgery centers serve as the first point of contact with a health professional and provide outpatient medical nursing dental and other services.

Telehealth

refers to the use of electronic communication technology to facilitate long-distance medical care and health education according to the federal Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA). At the intensive care level you can find mental health rooms in hospitals as well as hospitals dedicated specifically to mental health and long-term care centers.