[1.1] Healthcare as a System: The Hospital

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering health care institutions, levels of healthcare, hospital functions, hospital classifications, other health facilities, supporting services, and medical staff organization.

Long-Term Health Facility

A health facility for inpatients other than a hospital, featuring an organized medical staff and continuous nursing service, that provides medical, comprehensive, preventive, rehabilitative, social, spiritual, and emotional care.

Resident Treatment Facility

A health institution providing safe, hygienic living arrangements for residents, along with regular and emergency health services and other support services.

Clinic

A facility or area where ambulatory patients are seen for special study and treatment by a group of physicians practicing together, and where the patient is not confined in a hospital.

Ambulatory Patients

Patients who receive medical evaluation and care without being confined to a hospital bed; better known as outpatients.

Health Maintenance Organization (HMO)

An entity that provides comprehensive health services to individuals enrolled with the organization on a per capita prepayment basis.

Primary Care

The first level of healthcare emphasized in universal healthcare to avoid overburdening higher tiers; delivers a broad range of basic services including immunizations, minor illness care, wellness visits, symptom assessment, and specialist referrals.

Secondary Care

Healthcare provided outside the scope of primary care, typically in clinics with specialists, providing diagnostic procedures and acute treatment for short-term illness or injury.

Tertiary Care

A highly specialized level of inpatient care delivered in hospital settings requiring providers with advanced expertise and specialized equipment for complex interventions such as burn care, heart surgeries, and dialysis.

Quaternary Care

An extension of tertiary care that involves uncommon, highly advanced care requiring extreme subspecialization.

Hospital (DOH Definition)

A facility devoted primarily to the maintenance and operation of health facilities for diagnosis, treatment, and care of individuals suffering from illness, disease, injury, or deformity, or needing medical, nursing, surgical, or obstetrical care; any institution with installed beds, cribs, or bassinets for 24-hour use or longer.

Hospital (Board Exam Definition)

An organized structure that pools together all health professionals, diagnostic and therapeutic facilities, equipment and supplies, and physical facilities into a coordinated system for delivering healthcare to the public.

Minimum Bed Requirement for Hospital Classification

The statutory requirement that any health facility or clinic must have at least 6 beds (or cribs/bassinets) designated for 24-hour use to be legally licensed and classified as a hospital.

Precision Medicine

An emerging medical approach for disease prevention and treatment that accounts for individual variability in genes, environment, and lifestyle for each patient.

Pharmacogenetics Testing

A diagnostic method that analyzes how an individual's unique DNA affects drug metabolism to predict therapeutic response or risk of severe adverse drug reactions (e.g., carbamazepine-induced SJS/TEN).

Externship

Post-graduate clinical training conducted in a hospital where the healthcare professional is not formally employed.

CIPP Model

An evaluation framework encompassing Context, Input, Process, and Product, utilized to evaluate clinical programs such as Patient Medication Counseling (PMC) services.

A.O. No. 2012-0012

The Department of Health administrative order establishing the Rules and Regulations Governing the New Classification of Hospitals and Other Health Facilities in the Philippines.

General Hospital

A hospital that provides diagnostic and treatment services for all kinds of illnesses, diseases, injuries, or deformities (e.g., UP-PGH).

Specialty Hospital

A hospital that limits its scope to a specific disease/condition, a single organ system (e.g., NKTI, LCP, PHC), or a specific patient population (e.g., Dr. Jose Fabella Memorial Hospital, PCMC, NCH).

Level 1 General Hospital

A foundational hospital tier equipped with basic clinical capabilities, including a secondary clinical laboratory (basic), a blood station, and first-level X-ray equipment.

Level 2 General Hospital

A hospital meeting all Level 1 requirements plus a comprehensive tertiary clinical laboratory, second-level X-ray with mobile capabilities, and contrast examinations.

Level 3 General Hospital

The most advanced general hospital tier meeting all Level 1 and 2 standards plus accredited teaching/training programs, tertiary clinical lab with histopathology, a blood bank, and third-level X-ray with interventional radiology.

Trauma-Capable Facility (Trauma Center)

A hospital equipped to deliver comprehensive emergency services for any severity of traumatic injury, maintaining an on-site trauma surgeon 24/7 and an operating room continuously prepared for emergencies.

Trauma-Receiving Facility

A facility within a designated trauma service area equipped to evaluate, stabilize, and transport severely injured individuals to an appropriate trauma-capable hospital.

Short-Term Hospital

A hospital classification based on patient length of stay where average hospitalization is less than 30 days.

Long-Term Hospital

A hospital classification based on patient length of stay where hospitalization extends to more than 30 days.

Small Hospital

A hospital classified under functional bed capacity as having fewer than 100 installed inpatient beds.

Medium-Sized Hospital

A hospital classified under functional bed capacity as having between 101 and 499 installed inpatient beds.

Large Hospital

A hospital classified under functional bed capacity as having 500 or more installed inpatient beds.

Category A: Primary Care Facility

A first-contact health facility providing basic healthcare, emergency services, and normal delivery care, operated either with in-patient beds (e.g., infirmaries, birthing homes) or without beds (e.g., medical outpatient clinics, dental clinics).

Category B: Custodial Care Facility

A health facility that provides long-term custodial care, including psychiatric care facilities, substance abuse rehabilitation centers, leprosaria/sanitaria, and nursing homes.

Category C: Diagnostic/Therapeutic Facility

A facility that examines the human body or biological specimens to establish a diagnosis or guide treatment, including medical laboratories, radiologic facilities, and nuclear medicine facilities.

Nuclear Medicine Facility

A diagnostic or therapeutic facility employing radioactive materials for diagnosis, treatment, or research; uniquely regulated by the Philippine Nuclear Research Institute (PNRI) rather than the DOH.

Category D: Specialized Out-Patient Facility

A healthcare facility performing highly specialized procedures on an ambulatory outpatient basis, such as dialysis clinics, surgical centers, IVF centers, and chemotherapy clinics.

Central Supply Service (CSS)

A hospital supporting service responsible for preparing, sterilizing, and supplying sterile linens, operating room packs, and other medical-surgical materials.

Medical Record Service

A hospital department that curates complete clinical histories from admission to discharge to support care planning, institutional evaluation, clinical research, and medical education.

Medical Social Service (MSS)

A hospital department functioning as a primary liaison between the facility, the patient, and the wider community, frequently overseeing charity programs and welfare support.

Open Staff

A medical staff structure where qualified private practitioners are permitted to use hospital private room facilities to treat their patients in compliance with hospital regulations.

Closed Staff

A medical staff structure where all professional medical services (both private and charity care) are exclusively controlled and administered by designated attending hospital physicians.

Attending Medical Staff

The active medical staff directly involved in direct patient care who also carry departmental, administrative, and organizational responsibilities.

Consulting Medical Staff

Medical practitioners of recognized professional ability (typically holding specialized fellowship credentials) who provide expert clinical counsel and specialized opinions.

Honorary Medical Staff

Retired or emeritus staff members and distinguished physicians whom the medical staff chooses to recognize with an honorary title without active clinical obligations.

Associate Medical Staff

Assistant medical staff members currently undergoing an introductory evaluation period for potential promotion into the active attending staff.

Courtesy Medical Staff

Physicians granted privileges to admit an occasional patient to the hospital who are eligible for staff membership but cannot vote or hold office in the medical staff organization.

Resident Medical Staff

Physicians receiving full-time, specialized clinical training within the hospital in the transitional interval between their post-graduate internship (PGI) and specialized fellowship.