2.
Acute Care: Acute care is a branch of secondary health care where a patient receives active but short-term treatment for a severe injury or episode of illness, an urgent medical condition, or during recovery from surgery. 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 from a range of medical and surgical specialties. Acute care may require a stay in a hospital emergency department, ambulatory surgery center, 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 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.
3.
Hospice Care: Hospice care is a type of care and philosophy of care that focuses on the palliation of a chronically ill, terminally ill or seriously ill patient's pain and symptoms, and attending to their emotional and spiritual needs. In Western society, the concept of hospice has been evolving in Europe since the 11th century. Then, and for centuries thereafter in Roman Catholic tradition, hospices were places of hospitality for the sick, wounded, or dying, as well as those for travelers and pilgrims. The modern concept of hospice includes palliative care for the incurably ill given in such institutions as hospitals or nursing homes, but also care provided to those who would rather spend their last months and days of life in their own homes. The first modern hospice care was created by Cicely Saunders in 1967. In the United States the term is largely defined by the practices of the Medicare system and other health insurance providers, which make hospice care available, either in an inpatient facility or at the patient's home, to patients with a terminal prognosis who are medically certified at hospice onset to have less than six months to live. According to the NHPCO [National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization] 2012 report on facts and figures of Hospice care, 66.4% received care in their place of residence and 26.1% in a Hospice inpatient facility. In the late 1970s the U.S. government began to view hospice care as a humane care option for the terminally ill. In 1982 Congress initiated the creation of the Medicare Hospice Benefit which became permanent in 1986. In 1993, President Clinton installed hospice as a guaranteed benefit and an accepted component of health care provisions. Outside the United States, the term hospice tends to be primarily associated with the particular buildings or institutions that specialize in such care (although so-called "hospice at home" services may also be available).[citation needed] Outside the United States such institutions may similarly provide care mostly in an end-of-life setting, but they may also be available for patients with other specific palliative care needs. Hospice care also involves assistance for patients’ families to help them cope with what is happening and provide care and support to keep the patient at home. Although the movement has met with some resistance, hospice has rapidly expanded through the United Kingdom, the United States and elsewhere.
