Levels of Care
This level of care is provided by the clinician of first contact for the patient, often a general practitioner or family practitioner.
What is primary care?
These hospitals admit patients for stays lasting 30 or more days.
What are long-term care hospitals?
Community Health Centers must be located in areas designated as this by the federal government.
What are medically underserved areas (MUAs)?
This level of care involves referral to subspecialists like orthopedic surgeons or neurologists.
What is tertiary care?
Most of the beds set up and staffed in hospitals are for these general services.
What are medical-surgical services?
Ambulatory care accounts for approximately this fraction of healthcare spending in the United States.
What is one-quarter to one-third?
This highest level of care, often provided by academic medical centers, involves highly specialized equipment and personnel.
What is quaternary care?
This type of hospital trains future physicians, conducts research, and cares for patients with rare or complex conditions.
What is a teaching hospital?
This type of facility was designated by Congress in 1977 to support primary care delivery in rural areas.
What is a rural health clinic?
This type of care is provided to a patient when referred by one health professional to another with more specialized qualifications or interests.
What is secondary care?
A hospital that only has a residency program and not the other features of a teaching hospital is referred to as this status.
What is a minor teaching status?
RHCs must have at least one of these non-physician providers present at least 50% of the time the clinic is open.
What is a nurse practitioner, physician assistant, or certified nurse midwife?
These centers offer a mixture of primary, secondary, and tertiary care services.
What are tertiary care centers?
AMCs are the most complex type of hospital and feature arrangements between these four constituent groups.
What are medical school, hospital, physicians, and host school?
Community Health Centers have to provide services on this type of payment scale.
What is sliding scale or adjusted based on ability to pay?