Palliative care is an interdisciplinary medical caregiving approach aimed at optimizing quality of life and mitigating suffering among people with serious, complex, and often terminal illnesses. Within the published literature, many definitions of palliative care exist. The World Health Organization (WHO) describes palliative care as "an approach that improves the quality of life of patients and their families facing the problems associated with life-threatening illness, through the prevention and relief of suffering by means of early identification and impeccable assessment and treatment of pain and other problems, physical, psychosocial, and spiritual". In the past, palliative care was a disease specific approach, but today the WHO takes a broader patient-centered approach that suggests that the principles of palliative care should be applied as early as possible to any chronic and ultimately fatal illness. This shift was important because if a disease-oriented approach is followed, the needs and preferences of the patient are not fully met and aspects of care, such as pain, quality of life, and social support, as well as spiritual and emotional needs, fail to be addressed. Rather, a patient-centered model prioritizes relief of suffering and tailors care to increase the quality of life for terminally ill patients.
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.
The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) is the component of the United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) led by the Under Secretary of Veterans Affairs for Health that implements the healthcare program of the VA through a nationalized healthcare service in the United States, providing healthcare and healthcare-adjacent services to veterans through the administration and operation of 146 VA Medical Centers (VAMC) with integrated outpatient clinics, 772 Community Based Outpatient Clinics (CBOC), and 134 VA Community Living Centers Programs. It is the largest division in the department, and second largest in the entire federal government, employing over 350,000 employees. All VA hospitals, clinics and medical centers are owned by and operated by the Department of Veterans Affairs, and all of the staff employed in VA hospitals are government employees. Because of this, veterans that qualify for VHA healthcare do not pay premiums or deductibles for their healthcare but may have to make copayments depending on the medical procedure. VHA is not a part of the US Department of Defense Military Health System.
Cleveland Clinic, founded in 1921 by a group of faculty and alumni from the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, is a nonprofit American academic medical center based in Cleveland, Ohio. Owned and operated by the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, an Ohio nonprofit corporation, it runs a 170-acre campus in Cleveland, as well as 11 affiliated hospitals, 19 family health centers in Northeast Ohio, and hospitals in Florida and Nevada. International operations include the Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi hospital in the United Arab Emirates and Cleveland Clinic Canada, which has two executive health and sports medicine clinics in Toronto. Another hospital campus in the United Kingdom, Cleveland Clinic London, opened to outpatients in 2021 and fully opened in 2022. Tomislav Mihaljevic is the president and CEO.
The American College of Cardiology (ACC), based in Washington, D.C., is a nonprofit medical association established in 1949. It bestows credentials upon cardiovascular specialists who meet its qualifications. Education is a core component of the college, which is also active in the formulation of health policy and the support of cardiovascular research.
The George Washington University Hospital is a for-profit hospital in Washington, D.C., affiliated with the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences. Since 1997, the George Washington University Hospital has been jointly owned and operated by a partnership between a subsidiary of Universal Health Services and the George Washington University.
Dartmouth–Hitchcock Medical Center (DHMC), the flagship campus of the Dartmouth Health system, is the U.S. state of New Hampshire's only academic medical center. DHMC is a 486-inpatient bed hospital and serves as a major tertiary-care referral site for patients throughout northern New England. As an academic medical center, DHMC offers primary, specialty and subspecialty care as well as education and research in partnership with the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, one of America's oldest medical schools, as well as the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth and The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy & Clinical Practice.
Evidence-based design (EBD) is the process of constructing a building or physical environment based on scientific research to achieve the best possible outcomes. Evidence-based design is especially important in evidence-based medicine, where research has shown that environment design can affect patient outcomes. It is also used in architecture, interior design, landscape architecture, facilities management, education, and urban planning. Evidence-based design is part of the larger movement towards evidence-based practices.
Providence Health & Services is a not-for-profit Catholic health care system operating multiple hospitals and medical clinics across seven states, with headquarters in Renton, Washington. The health system includes 51 hospitals, more than 800 non-acute facilities, and numerous assisted living facilities in the western Half of the United States (Alaska, Washington, Oregon, California, Montana, New Mexico, and Texas. Providence Health & Services was founded by the Sisters of Providence in 1859 and merged with St. Joseph Health in 2016.
Michigan Medicine is the academic medical center of the University of Michigan, a public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
A Patient Safety Organization (PSO) is a group, institution, or association that improves medical care by reducing medical errors. Common functions of patient safety organizations are data collection, analysis, reporting, education, funding, and advocacy. A PSO differs from a Federally designed Patient Safety Organization (PSO), which provides health care providers in the U.S. privilege and confidentiality protections for efforts to improve patient safety and the quality of patient care delivery
Georgetown University School of Medicine, a medical school opened in 1851, is one of Georgetown University's five graduate schools. It is located on Reservoir Road in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, DC, adjacent to the university's main campus. The School of Medicine works in association with the 609-bed MedStar Georgetown University Hospital, MedStar Washington Hospital Center, and nine other affiliated federal and community hospitals in the Washington metropolitan area. Georgetown is the oldest Catholic medical school in the United States.
Torrance Memorial Medical Center is a private hospital located in Torrance, California. Torrance Memorial was the first hospital in the South Bay region and is currently one of the three burn centers in Los Angeles County.
CoxHealth is a six-hospital, 1,050 bed not-for-profit healthcare system headquartered in Springfield, Missouri. It serves a 25 county region of Southwest Missouri and Northwest Arkansas. CoxHealth is Springfield's largest employer, and the 7th largest non-governmental employer in the state of Missouri with more than 12,605 people employed throughout the system.
Guided Care is a model of proactive, comprehensive health care for people with several chronic conditions. A form of medical home, the model has been developed and tested by a multidisciplinary team of experts at the Roger C. Lipitz Center for Integrated Health Care in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Guided Care is provided by physician-nurse teams in primary care practices to the physicians' most complex patients, mainly older adults with chronic conditions and complicated health needs. It is designed to increase patients' quality of care and quality of life, while improving the efficiency of their use of health care resources, thus reducing their overall health care costs.
Royal Columbian Hospital (RCH) is among the oldest hospitals in British Columbia and one of the busiest in the Fraser Health Authority. It is located in New Westminster overlooking the Fraser River and is the only hospital in the Lower Mainland that is immediately adjacent to a Skytrain station (Sapperton).
Lexington Medical Center is a medical complex in Lexington, SC. Lexington Medical Center is owned by Lexington County Health Service District, Inc, a private company. The network includes six community medical centers, an occupational health facility, the largest nursing home in the Carolinas, an Alzheimer's disease care center and seventy physician practices in a variety of services.
The Ecology Center is a membership-based nonprofit environmental organization based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It works at the local, state and national levels on environmental justice, health, waste, and community issues. It was formed after the first Earth Day in 1970 by community activists in Ann Arbor. Since its founding, it has run demonstrations and campaigns to promote recycling, health care, education, and awareness about healthy foods and products.
PeaceHealth is a not-for-profit health care system that owns and operates ten hospitals, and numerous clinics, in the Western United States. Headquartered in Vancouver, Washington, the organization has operations in Alaska, Oregon, and Washington, and was founded by the Catholic Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace in 1976.
Dana L. Suskind is a Professor of Surgery and Pediatrics at the University of Chicago Medical Center ; director of UChicago Medicine's Pediatric Hearing Loss and Cochlear Implant program; and founder and co-director of the TMW Center for Early Learning + Public Health at the University of Chicago.
