Acute care is a branch of
secondary health care where a
patient
A patient is any recipient of health care services that are performed by healthcare professionals. The patient is most often ill or injured and in need of treatment by a physician, nurse, optometrist, dentist, veterinarian, or other hea ...
receives active but short-term treatment for a severe injury or episode of illness, an urgent medical condition, or during recovery from surgery.
[Alberta Health Services]
Acute care.
Accessed 3 August 2011. In medical terms, care for
acute health conditions is the opposite from
chronic care, or
longer-term care.
Acute care services are generally delivered by teams of
health care professionals
A health professional, healthcare professional, or healthcare worker (sometimes abbreviated HCW) is a provider of health care treatment and advice based on formal training and experience. The field includes those who work as a nurse, physician (suc ...
from a range of medical and surgical specialties. Acute care may require a stay in a
hospital emergency department,
ambulatory surgery center
Outpatient surgery, also known as ambulatory surgery, day surgery, day case surgery, or same-day surgery, is surgery that does not require an overnight hospital stay.The International Association for Ambulatory Surgery (IAAS) would not consider a ...
, urgent care centre or other short-term stay facility, along with the assistance of diagnostic services, surgery, or follow-up
outpatient care in the community.
Hospital-based acute
inpatient
A patient is any recipient of health care services that are performed by healthcare professionals. The patient is most often ill or injured and in need of treatment by a physician, nurse, optometrist, dentist, veterinarian, or other health car ...
care typically has the goal of discharging patients as soon as they are deemed healthy and stable. Acute care settings include emergency department, intensive care, coronary care, cardiology, neonatal intensive care, and many general areas where the patient could become acutely unwell and require stabilization and transfer to another higher dependency unit for further treatment.
Current issues in acute care
Australia
The 2009 "Final Report of the Special Commission of Inquiry into Acute Care Services in NSW Public Hospitals", known as
The Garling Report, documented a series of high-profile medical controversies in the
New South Wales
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public hospital system, and issued over one hundred recommendations that stimulated considerable discussion and controversy.
United States
A federal law known as the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) "requires most hospitals to provide an examination and needed stabilizing treatment, without consideration of insurance coverage or ability to pay, when a patient presents to an emergency room for attention to an emergency medical condition."
See also
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Acute Care of at-Risk Newborns
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Acute medicine Acute medicine is a specialty within internal medicine concerned with the immediate and early specialist management of adult patients with a wide range of medical conditions who present in hospital as emergencies. It developed in the United Kingdo ...
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Case mix group
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Health care
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Secondary care
Health care or healthcare is the improvement of health via the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, amelioration or cure of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and mental impairments in people. Health care is delivered by health profe ...
**
Reason for encounter
Reason is the capacity of consciously applying logic by drawing conclusions from new or existing information, with the aim of seeking the truth. It is closely associated with such characteristically human activities as philosophy, science, langu ...
References
{{Health care
Types of health care facilities