The Importance of Hospital

A hospital is an institution for health care providingintensive care and long-term care, facilities for
patient treatment by specialised staff andsurgery and childbirth, bio assay laboratories, and
equipment, and often but not always providing forso forth. Larger cities may have many different
longer-term patient stays. A hospital today is ahospitals of varying sizes and facilities. One plum
centre for professional health care provided bywall says it all: Hospital services are separate and
physicians and nurses. During the Middle Ages itdistinct from boarding and grooming services-yet
could serve other functions, such as almshouseboth are easily accessible to pet owners and
for the poor, or hostel for pilgrims. The nameteam members.
comes from Latin hospes (host), which is also theDuring a candid conversation with his architect, Dr.
root for the words hotel and hospitality.David Gordon, medical director of VCA Arroyo
Hospital-acquired infections (HAIs), also known asAnimal Hospital (formerly Arroyo Pet Care
health-care-associated infections, encompassCenter) in Lake Forest, Calif., mentioned he'd like
almost all clinically evident infections that do notto distinctly separate the hospital and medical
originate from a patient's original admittingfunctions and the boarding and grooming functions.
diagnosis.Yet his idea of using a scalpel handle and blade on
Within hours after admission, a patient's florathe outside of the building to depict that
begins to acquire characteristics of theseparation didn't quite seem appropriate. Some
surrounding bacterial pool. Most infections thatpatients just come just for diagnosis and/or
become clinically evident after 48 hours oftherapy and then leave (outpatients), others stay
hospitalization are considered hospital-acquired.the nights (inpatients). Putting the patient first is a
Infections that occur after the patient's dischargechallenge that requires not just a huge change in
from the hospital can be considered to have athe mindset of all the stakeholders in health care
nonsocial origin if the organisms were acquiredprovision, but also the means by which to
during the hospital stay. Today, hospitals aremeasure the levels of satisfaction of patients, and
usually funded by the state, health organizationsto discover what matters to them before, during
(for profit or non-profit), health insurances orand after their visit to any hospital. Patient quality
charities, including direct charitable donations. Ininitiatives, with their softer, experiential focus than
history, however, they were often founded andclinical audit, with its precise and scientific methods
funded by religious orders or charitable individualsof measurement, demand different measurement
and leaders.techniques.
Similarly, modern-day hospitals are largely staffedOften, the most effective means is to adapt
by professional physicians, surgeons and nurses,from the survey techniques widely practiced in
whereas in history, this work was usually done bysocial research and market research by using
the founding religious orders or by volunteers.surveys and objective self-completion questioning
There are several kinds of hospital. Thetechniques. Yet, without careful management, the
best-known is the general hospital, which is set upmeasurement teams can drown in a sea of
to deal with many kinds of disease and injury, andquestionnaires. Surveys are labor intensive, so it
typically has an emergency ward to deal withmakes sense to use software developed to
immediate threats to health and the capacity tohandle surveys in this context too, and make the
dispatch emergency medical services. A generalprocess into something that can be managed by
hospital is typically the major health care facility inthe small teams usually given this responsibility
its region, with large numbers of beds forwithin the hospital.