AMBULATORY CARE SERVICES

Inpatient Hospitalization vs. Ambulatory Care Services

Inpatient Hospitalization vs. Ambulatory Care Services

Introduction

The health care system of the nation is undergoing a groundbreaking transformation because of the increase in the prices, technological and scientific changes as well as the pressures on the private and public budgets. It is because of these forces that there are gigantic changes in the organization, structure, delivery and financing of health care. The modern health care delivery system is poles apart from what it used to be before and shall not be the same as now tomorrow. The organizations, which provide health care, are now changing in such a manner which could not even be imagined just a few years prior to today (Ormond & Lutzky, 2001, pp. 15-43).

There is a mixture of differences in technological, payment policies and scientific advancements which has allowed a shift from the conventional age-old setting of inpatient hospital to the community, ambulatory care settings, nursing home and homes. More and more hospitals are now giving services which are non-traditional or conventional that would include ambulatory services, which is based on hospitals, skilled nursing services units and home healthcare (Johnson, n.d). The modern healthcare system is like an earthquake in accordance with its' relative unpredictability, resulting anxiety and lack of control. The centre of this earthquake is American hospital (Shi, & Singh, 2010).

This paper aims at exploring the major factors causing the shift from inpatient hospitalization to ambulatory care services, while identifying the implications the development has for the hospitals, patients, and the entire health care system.

Discussion

The edges of nursing facilities and hospitals are beginning to fade away, while the walls which separated then are moving in an outward direction in the whole community, where the home health service which is based on community and nursing facility alternatives is undergoing rapid development (Williams, & Torrens, 2008). The common, past nursing home would provide custodial care primarily, only for the elderly people who required aids or those people who suffered from acute conditions and were undergoing treatment in the hospitals. In the modern days, nursing home care is demanded to shift from the conventional model of custodial care and focus more towards such a model which has possess a component of rehabilitation (Lowell-Smith, 1994, pp. 275-283).

These said facilities of nursing have started to offer a huge range of services to such people who have a certain disability and thus have an increased number of conditions which are unstable as well as chronic. The kinds of care which are being offered to the patients are also evolving with the rising illness severity and rising residents' disabilities. It is now inclusive of ventilator assistance, rehabilitative care and the care for those patients who need respite care or suffer from acute care crisis. There are now special care beds available in the facilities of nurses and they have increased in huge numbers over the years specifically for those people who are suffering from dementia such as Alzheimer's' disease, ...