Introduction to Healthcare

 

What is Healthcare?

Maintenance and restoration of health through the treatment and prevention of diseases especially by trained and licensed professionals.

Purpose

The basic purpose of health care is to improve the quality of life by improving health. Commercial businesses focus on generating financial profit to prop up their valuations and remain viable. Health care

must focus on generating social profit to fulfill its promise to society.

Objectives

The main objectives of healthcare are as follows:

• Improving the health of the population.

• Improving the health system's ability to respond to the population it serves.

• Equity in financial contribution, i.e. the extent to which the burden of paying for the health system is fairly distributed among households.

Types

• l Primary care

• l Secondary care

• l Tertiary care

• l Quaternary care

• l Home and community care

Primary care

Primary care refers to the work of health professionals who act as the first point of consultation for all patients in the health care system. Such a specialist would usually be a primary care doctor such as a general practitioner or family doctor.

Secondary care

Secondary care includes acute care: the necessary short-term treatment of a short but serious illness, injury or other medical condition. This care is often found in a hospital's emergency department. Secondary care also includes skilled attendance during labor, intensive care, and medical imaging services.

Territorial care

Tertiary care is specialized consultation health care, usually for inpatients and on referral from a primary or secondary health care provider, in a facility staffed and equipped for advanced medical examination and treatment, such as a tertiary referral hospital.

Quaternary care

The term Quaternary care is sometimes used as an extension of tertiary care to refer to advanced levels of medicine that are highly specialized and not widely available. Experimental medicine and some types of unusual diagnostic or surgical procedures are considered Quaternary care.

Home and community care

They include professional services in residential and community settings to support self-care, home care, long-term care, assisted living, substance use disorder treatment, and other types of health and social care services.