Ambulatory Care Vs Outpatient Care Essay

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Ambulatory care and outpatient care are the same, these basically mean that a patient can ambulate or walk to a clinic to receive medical treatment. Other forms of patient care are emergency room care and inpatient care. Inpatient care is for patients who need to be admitted into a hospital for treatment. The cost of outpatient care has reduced in cost, this has led to a surge in the use of these facilities. The main reason for this surge is that the alternatives are much more expensive, such as the emergency department or a primary care provider (PCP). Patients and insurance companies pay much less in copays and overall cost when an ambulatory urgent care center is visited for treatment over a traditional hospital’s emergency department. Both of these are considered outpatient or ambulatory services. A large number of patients enter the emergency department via ambulances or walk in with life threatening diseases. In many cases these patients are hospitalized. All of these services are very expensive for both patients and insurance companies, therefore outpatient clinics are excellent alternative for urgent and preventive care. Urgent care clinics offer a few advantages, such as accessibility, competition which lowers cost and they offer better coordination of services. The ambulatory urgent care centers offer rapid and convenient treatment especially after hours when primary care providers are not available. There has been a shift from inpatient to outpatient …show more content…

In a similar report by the American Hospital Association in 2007 only 47% of surgeries were performed in a hospital, down from around 90% in 1981. About 37% were conducted in an ambulatory center and 16% were performed in physician

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