Health Facilities Where Medical Professionals Provide Care

  Urgent care (UR) facilities exist for on-demand healthcare needs that aren’t severe enough for the emergency room, but are too severe or concerning to wait for a scheduled appointment at the doctor’s office. Urgent care is a common choice when children get sick, for example, and need an immediate diagnosis or relief from symptoms. 

 While telehealth isn’t really a type of healthcare facility, it is worth mentioning in its potential for serious growth in the coming years. Telehealth, telemedicine and remote healthcare can represent a digital type of healthcare facility.

Telehealth refers to the use of electronic communication technology to facilitate long-distance health care and health education, according to the federal Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA). Many people lack easy access to physicians and specialty clinics. Whether through their physical location, physical ability, living situation or transportation choices, many patients have a hard time getting to a medical practitioner face to face.

 Ambulatory surgical centers, also called outpatient surgical facilities, allow patients to receive certain surgical procedures outside a hospital environment. These environments often offer surgeries at a lower cost than hospitals while also reducing the risk of exposure to infection—since patients are there for surgery, not to recover from sickness and disease.

Ambulatory surgical centers don’t provide diagnostic services or clinic hours. Instead, they take patients who have been referred for surgery by a hospital or physician—they’re designed to be “all business” when it comes to surgical care.

A birth center is a healthcare facility for childbirth that focuses on the midwifery model, according to the American Association of Birth Centers. They aim to create a birth environment that feels more comfortable to the mother and allows for a cost-effective, family-inclusive birth.

Birth centers are not typically equipped with the same contingency equipment and staff as a hospital, such as surgeons in case of a C-section or a neonatal intensive care unit. As a result, birth centers accommodate only healthy pregnancies without any known risk or complication factors.

Blood banks allow donors to donate blood and platelets while also storing and sorting blood into components that can be used most effectively by patients.

“Red blood cells carry oxygen, platelets help the blood clot and plasma has specific proteins that allows proper regulation of coagulation and healing,” writes the American Society of Hematology. Sometimes patients need these particular components specifically, and sometimes they just need lots of blood. For example, a single car accident victim could require as many as 100 pints of blood.

 The definition of a clinic is “a facility for diagnosis and treatment of outpatients.” There are many healthcare facilities that fit that definition across a wide variety of treatment specialties.

Many people go to a clinic for routine doctor’s appointments and checkups. These healthcare facilities can be a physician’s private practice, a group practice setting or a corporately owned clinic that may be connected to a larger healthcare system or hospital.

Clinics cover a lot of ground in healthcare. For example, you could visit a dental clinic to have a toothache investigated, a physical therapy clinic to recover from an athletic injury or a pediatric speech therapy clinic to help your child overcome an articulation disorder.

 Diabetes is a very serious illness in the United States. Over 30 million people have diabetes and many of them don’t know it, reports the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Additionally, over a third of the national population is highly at risk for diabetes, in a condition called prediabetes. 

 Patients with kidney disease often need regular treatments of dialysis. Dialysis is a process that filters and cleans the blood artificially—the work functioning kidneys normally take on. About 14 percent of Americans have chronic kidney disease. When kidneys aren’t able to filter the blood the way they are supposed to, patients might need dialysis as often as three times a week to avoid serious complications. With such high demand, dialysis facilities rose up to meet patient needs and avoid undue strain on hospitals. 

 Hospice can be a particularly confusing title. It represents a package of insurance benefits that deals with an end-of-life trajectory. It also represents a philosophy of care provision for dying patients as well as official networks that offer hospice care. Hospice is also a designation for specific healthcare facilities that specialize in end-of-life care. 

 Hospitals are the ultimate “catch-all” healthcare facility. Their services can vary greatly depending on their size and location, but a hospital’s goal is to save lives. Hospitals typically have a wide range of units that can be loosely broken into intensive care and non-intensive care units. 

 These facilities, much like their hospital counterparts, offer diagnostic imaging services to patients. Diagnostic imaging includes CT scans, ultrasounds, X-rays, MRIs and more. While hospitals and even clinics have imaging centers, outpatient facilities help keep costs lower and allow more convenient scheduling for patients. 

 Mental health treatment facilities sometimes exist as a general institution for any mental health issue and are sometimes specialized. Examples of these kinds of facilities are suicidal thoughts (or suicidal ideation) treatment, depression treatment, trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) treatment, treatment for anxiety disorders, behavioral disorders.

 Nursing homes offer a living situation for patients whose medical needs aren’t severe enough for hospitalization, but are too serious to manage at home. Some nursing homes offer services for heavier medical needs, such as speech and occupational therapy. Other nursing homes try to create a homier atmosphere, and might operate like an apartment complex with medical staff on hand. 

 Orthopedic medicine deals with muscles and bones. Physical therapists are typically the practitioner patients see for problems in these areas of the body. If you are experiencing chronic lower back pain, for example, you might see a physical therapist at an orthopedic center or clinic to get a diagnosis and a plan of treatment.