All of the facilities, people, and functions directed toward promoting, maintaining, and restoring health.
A system designed to take responsibility only for the care of those who seek it out. It responds to the needs of individual patients who present themselves with illness or injury.
An organization that manages and provides treatments and preventive services for the healthy, the sick, and the injured. The system includes physicians and their assistants, dentists and their assistants, nurses and their surrogates, the various levels of diagnostic and care facilities, voluntary organizations, medical administrators in hospitals and government agencies, the medical insurance industry, and the pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers. An ideal health care system emphasizes preventive medicine and encourages preventive self-care; enables access to primary care for assessment of and assistance with health problems; provides secondary or acute care involving emergency medical services and complex medical and surgical services; facilitates tertiary care for patients who need referral to facilities that provide rehabilitative services; offers respite care to allow families temporary relief from the daily tasks of caring for individuals for whom they are responsible; provides continuing supportive services for those whose mental or physical illness or disability is such that they need assistance with everyday tasks of living (e.g., home health and nursing home care); and provides hospice care for those with terminal illnesses, all at a reasonable cost.