Acute care is a branch ofsecondary health care where apatient receives active but short-term treatment for a severe injury or episode of illness, an urgent medical condition, or during recovery from surgery.[1][2] In medical terms, care foracute health conditions is the opposite fromchronic care, orlonger-term care.
Acute care services are generally delivered by teams ofhealth care professionals from a range of medical and surgical specialties. Acute care may require a stay in ahospitalemergency department,ambulatory surgery center, urgent care centre or other short-term stay facility, along with the assistance of diagnostic services, surgery, or follow-upoutpatient care in the community.[2] Hospital-based acuteinpatient care typically has the goal of discharging patients as soon as they are deemed healthy and stable.[3] Acute care settings include 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.
The 2009 "Final Report of the Special Commission of Inquiry into Acute Care Services in NSW Public Hospitals", known asThe Garling Report, documented a series of high-profile medical controversies in theNew South Wales public hospital system, and issued over one hundred recommendations that stimulated considerable discussion and controversy.[4]
A federal law known as the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) "requires most hospitals to provide an examination and needed stabilizing treatment, without consideration of insurance coverage or ability to pay, when a patient presents to an emergency room for attention to an emergency medical condition."[5]
