Acute care is a branch of secondary health care where a patient

Patient

A patient is any recipient of healthcare services. The patient is most often ill or injured and in need of treatment by a physician, advanced practice registered nurse, veterinarian, or other health care provider....

 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

Acute (medicine)

In medicine, an acute disease is a disease with either or both of:# a rapid onset, as in acute infection# a short course ....

 health conditions is the opposite from chronic

Chronic (medicine)

A chronic disease is a disease or other human health condition that is persistent or long-lasting in nature. The term chronic is usually applied when the course of the disease lasts for more than three months. Common chronic diseases include asthma, cancer, diabetes and HIV/AIDS.In medicine, the...

 care, or longer term care.

Acute care services are generally delivered by teams of health care professionals

Health care provider

A health care provider is an individual or an institution that provides preventive, curative, promotional or rehabilitative health care services in a systematic way to individuals, families or communities....

 from a range of medical and surgical specialties. Acute care may require a stay in a hospital

Hospital

A hospital is a health care institution providing patient treatment by specialized staff and equipment. Hospitals often, but not always, provide for inpatient care or longer-term patient stays....

 emergency department

Emergency department

An emergency department , also known as accident & emergency , emergency room , emergency ward , or casualty department is a medical treatment facility specialising in acute care of patients who present without prior appointment, either by their own means or by ambulance...

, 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 but are not limited to: 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.

Australia

The 2008 "Final Report of the Special Commission of Inquiry into Acute Care Services in NSW Public Hospitals", known as The Garling Report

The Garling Report

The "Final Report of the Special Commission of Inquiry into Acute Care Services in NSW Public Hospitals", by Commissioner Peter Garling, is a 2008 report from Australia known in the media as The Garling Report....

, documented a series of high profile medical controversies in the New South Wales

New South Wales

New South Wales is a state of :Australia, located in the east of the country. It is bordered by Queensland, Victoria and South Australia to the north, south and west respectively. To the east, the state is bordered by the Tasman Sea, which forms part of the Pacific Ocean. New South Wales...

 public hospital system, and issued over one hundred recommendations that stimulated considerable discussion and controversy.

United States

An important aspect of the current health care crisis in the US is the result of the growing need for acute care despite a decrease in the number of facilities which provide that care. This mismatch has resulted from the dramatic increase in the number of patients who are uninsured or underinsured, and therefore unable to pay for services rendered. Those patients often turn to emergency departments for their primary care needs. That has resulted in overcrowding and made it increasingly difficult to focus adequate resources on those patients who present with true emergencies.

See also

• Acute Care of at-Risk Newborns
  Acute Care of at-Risk Newborns
  Acute Care of at-Risk Newborns is a Canadian resuscitation educational program which focuses on the first few hours of neonatal life. This differs from the NRP program which focuses on the first several minutes...
  
  
• Acute medicine
  Acute medicine
  Acute medicine is that part of 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 Kingdom in the early 2000s as a dedicated field of medicine,...
  
  
• Health care
  Health care
  Health care is the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and mental impairments in humans. Health care is delivered by practitioners in medicine, chiropractic, dentistry, nursing, pharmacy, allied health, and other care providers...
  
  
  • Primary care
    Primary care
    Primary care is the term for the health services by providers who act as the principal point of consultation for patients within a health care system...
    
    
  • Secondary care
  • Reason for encounter