The National Association for Ambulatory Urgent Care, or NAFAC, is a national professional organization for ambulatory care clinic owners and physicians specializing in ambulatory care. The association was founded in 1973. As of July 2006, the group had about 500 members representing roughly 1,700 clinics. Members include single office urgent care centers, primary care physicians, urgent-care chain facilities, ambulatory surgery centers, and large healthcare systems across the United States.
Ambulatory care or outpatient care is medical care provided on an outpatient basis, including diagnosis, observation, consultation, treatment, intervention, and rehabilitation services. This care can include advanced medical technology and procedures even when provided outside of hospitals.
Primary care is the day-to-day healthcare given by a health care provider. Typically this provider acts as the first contact and principal point of continuing care for patients within a healthcare system, and coordinates other specialist care that the patient may need. Patients commonly receive primary care from professionals such as a primary care physician, a nurse practitioner, or a physician assistant. In some localities, such a professional may be a registered nurse, a pharmacist, a clinical officer, or a Ayurvedic or other traditional medicine professional. Depending on the nature of the health condition, patients may then be referred for secondary or tertiary care.
The United States of America (USA), commonly known as the United States or America, is a country comprising 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, and various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is slightly smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U.S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D.C., and the most populous city is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico. The State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U.S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The extremely diverse geography, climate, and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.
NAFAC publishes a reference titled Bill's Book: Developing Urgent Care Centers. The Association, also, offers the National Urgent Care Practice Standards Certification as a voluntary, self-administered method for urgent care centers to improve quality measures without the hassles of preparing for outside inspection teams.
A clinic is a healthcare facility that is primarily focused on the care of outpatients. Clinics can be privately operated or publicly managed and funded. They typically cover the primary healthcare needs of populations in local communities, in contrast to larger hospitals which offer specialised treatments and admit inpatients for overnight stays.
UConn Health is the branch of the University of Connecticut that oversees clinical care, advanced biomedical research, and academic education in medicine. The main branch is located in Farmington, Connecticut, in the US. It includes a teaching hospital, the UConn School of Medicine, School of Dental Medicine, and Graduate School. Other smaller branches exist in Storrs and Canton. The university owns and operates many smaller clinics around the state that contain UConn Medical Group, UConn Health Partners, University Dentists and research facilities.
Urgent care is a category of walk-in clinic focused on the delivery of ambulatory care in a dedicated medical facility outside of a traditional emergency department. Urgent care centers primarily treat injuries or illnesses requiring immediate care, but not serious enough to require an emergency department (ED) visit. Urgent care centers are distinguished from similar ambulatory healthcare centers such as emergency departments and convenient care clinics by their scope of conditions treated and available facilities on-site.
SUNY Downstate Medical Center is a hospital of the State University of New York system located in the Flatbush neighborhood of central Brooklyn, New York. It is the only academic medical center for health education, research, and patient care serving Brooklyn’s 2.5 million residents. As of Fall 2018, it had a total student body of 1,846 and approximately 8,000 faculty and staff.
Allied health professions are health care professions distinct from nursing, medicine, and pharmacy. They work in health care teams to make the health care system function by providing a range of diagnostic, technical, therapeutic and direct patient care and support services that are critical to the other health professionals they work with and the patients they serve.
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 term “outpatient” arises from the fact that surgery patients may enter and leave the facility on the same day. The advantages of outpatient surgery over inpatient surgery include greater convenience and reduced costs.
Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School is a medical school of Rutgers University. It is one of the two graduate medical schools of Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences, together with New Jersey Medical School, and engages in cooperation with Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, the medical school’s principal affiliate.
Los Angeles County Department of Health Services operates the public hospitals and clinics in Los Angeles County, and is United States' second largest municipal health system, after NYC Health + Hospitals.
The University of Vermont Medical Center is an academic medical center located in Burlington, Vermont, United States. It is affiliated with the University of Vermont College of Medicine and the University of Vermont College of Nursing and Health Sciences and serves as both a regional referral center and a community hospital.
A walk-in clinic in the United States describes a very broad category of medical facilities loosely defined as those that accept patients on a walk-in basis and with no appointment required. A number of healthcare service providers fall under the walk-in clinic umbrella including urgent care centers, retail clinics and even many free clinics or community health clinics. Walk-in clinics offer the advantages of being accessible and often inexpensive. It is estimated that there are nearly 11,000 walk-in clinics in America, although it is impossible to calculate an exact number given the variable and ill-defined nature of the category. Urgent care centers make up the largest percentage of walk-in clinics in America with an estimated 9,000 locations nationwide. In fact, consumers often erroneously refer to all walk-in clinics as urgent care centers, and vice versa. Retail clinics are the next most prevalent in the industry with 1,443 locations as of July 1, 2013.
St. Rita's Medical Center is a large hospital serving a 70-mile radius of Lima, Ohio, United States. It was started in 1918 by Sisters of Mercy, an order of Roman Catholic women founded by Catherine McAuley in Dublin, Ireland in 1831.
The medical home, also known as the patient-centered medical home (PCMH), is a team-based health care delivery model led by a health care provider to provide comprehensive and continuous medical care to patients with a goal to obtain maximal health outcomes. It is described in the "Joint Principles" as "an approach to providing comprehensive primary care for children, youth and adults."
The earliest hospital at Fort Drum was a 540-bed mobilization hospital in the old post 2400 area, constructed during the period of 1942-44 while the post was still known as Pine Camp.
MedStar Health is a not-for-profit healthcare organization. It operates more than 120 entities, including ten hospitals in the Baltimore–Washington metropolitan area of the United States. In 2011 it was ranked as the employer with the largest number of local employees in the region.
Ambulatory care nursing is the nursing care of patients who receive treatment on an outpatient basis, ie they do not require admission to a hospital for an overnight stay. Ambulatory care includes those clinical, organizational and professional activities engaged in by registered nurses with and for individuals, groups, and populations who seek assistance with improving health and/or seek care for health-related problems. The American Academy of Ambulatory Care Nursing (AAACN) describes ambulatory care nursing as a comprehensive practice which is built on a broad knowledge base of nursing and health sciences, and applies clinical expertise rooted in the nursing process.
The Accreditation Association for Ambulatory Health Care (AAAHC), founded in 1979, is an American organization which accredits ambulatory health care organizations, including ambulatory surgery centers, office-based surgery centers, endoscopy centers, and college student health centers, as well as health plans, such as health maintenance organizations and preferred provider organizations. AAAHC has been granted "deemed status" to certify ambulatory surgery centers for Medicare by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. In 2009, the AAAHC added the Medical home to the types of organizations that it accredits. It offers on-site surveys for organizations seeking Medical Home accreditation or certification.
Elliot Hospital is an acute care hospital in Manchester, New Hampshire, United States. The Elliot was established as a charitable trust in 1880, was legally incorporated as a not-for-profit organization by an act of the New Hampshire Legislature in 1881, and opened its doors as the first community general hospital in New Hampshire on April 17, 1890. Today the hospital has 296 beds and is a regional trauma center for the city and the surrounding region. The Elliot has the only Level III neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) in southern New Hampshire.
Citizens Memorial Healthcare (CMH) is a rural healthcare network. CMH provides comprehensive care to the residents of five counties in southwest Missouri. CMH refers to two affiliated corporate entities. Citizens Memorial Hospital District is a Missouri public hospital. Citizens Memorial Health Care Foundation is a 501(c)3 non-profit corporation.
Jon Belsher is a medical professional and a part of the executive team at UCI Medical Affiliates. After serving in the Arizona Air National Guard, he worked for a number of non-profits prior to founding MedSpring. MedSpring was founded in Texas in 2011, when urgent care centers began to grow dramatically in their numbers in the United States. Since then, Belsher has helped expand MedSpring to become one of the largest urgent care providers in the United States.
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