Health Care Flashcards
When talking about health care, what pops up in your head? Hospital? Most likely. That’s because we don’t know much about the industry. It’s much more broad than just hospital. Let’s first discuss some major players in the health care world. There are 6 big players in the health care industry.
1. Health care services providers
- Hospitals
- Ambulatory care services
- Health insurance
- Long-term care
- Public health services
HEALTH CARE SERVICES PROVIDERS
Health care services providers are made up by a wide variety of highly educated individuals with many different skills to provide medical care services for individuals who seek their care.
The first player is Primary care (386). Primary care service is where we contact for the first time when we seek care. Primary care physicians work in this sector and are referred to as generalists (387) as they address a wide range of conditions and illnesses. In order to work, they need some sort of licences because this is a regulated industry (388).
Working under those primary care physicians are nurse practitioners (389). So for simplicity sake, primary care is where you call when you need medical help for the first time. They are generalists and stay in general practice (390).
Some other guys don’t like to stay in general practice forever and choose to pursue a specific area of medical specialty and become Specialty care providers (400). In other words, unlike people in primary care, they are specialists. Wanna know some areas they work in?
- Cardiology (401) - heart-related
- Plastic surgery - enhance your appearance
- Radiology (402) - making Radio Kien Tran (No, I’m kidding, it’s dealing with X-ray and other radiations)
- Dermatology (403) - skin-related
- Immunology (404) - immune-system-related
- Neurosurgery (405) - brain-related
- Pediatrics (406) - children-related
There are so many more areas they specialize in but you only need to learn a few most common ones for now.
Another type in the category of health care service providers is Dental service, working with oral health (407).
And there are Mental health care providers. People you might see are psychiatrists and psychologists and social workers (408). Social workers are professionals who helps improve individuals’ quality of life. Often, they are valuable consultants to other health care providers in helping people prepare and develop a support system that will facilitate good mental health.
Another type is nurses. Nurses are health care professionals who provide treatment, support, and care services for the ill, injured and aged.
The next type is rehabilitation (409) professionals and therapists (410). Rehabilitation means restoring to normal life. If you’ve been using drugs for a long time, you might want to go to a rehabilitation center to seek care.
Health care services providers comprises
- Primary care
- Specialty care
- Dental care
- Nurses
- Rehabilitation services
HOSPITALS
This is the place we go to be healed when we are sick. It’s the place where many of us come into this world and where many of us will leave this world. There are a variety of departments in a hospital. The largest department in a hospital is nursing. Nursing is also the largest health care profession in the United States.
AMBULATORY CARE SERVICES
Ambulatory care (411) is health care provided on an outpatient (412) basis. which allows a patient to receive personal health care consultation and treatment, surgery without being hospitalized.
HEALTH INSURANCE
Insurance is a form of risk management in which the risk is transferred to the insurance company in exchange for a payment, called a premium (413). If you want to buy a health insurance policy, you will have to pay a premium. If you are covered (414) by health insurance, you don’t have to pay medical bills in full. The insurance company will pay in part of in full for you. If you are not covered, then you should wish you never get sick because that might be financial devastating since medical bills can wipe out your finance. That’s why it’s important to get yourself covered so when ‘shit’ happens, you are safe.
The person who get covered is called the insured (415) or the beneficiary (416).
When you got protected by insurance, one thing will be likely to happen called moral hazard (417). Let me explain it. If you are not covered by the insurance, you pay significant attention to your health because you want to avoid paying the heavy bills. But once you got covered, you tend to pay less attention because the risk has been transferred to the insurance company. This is moral hazard.
covered (by insurance): protected
LONG-TERM CARE
Long-term care provides medical and social services to accommodate old or disable people. Western world are now facing the aging population leading to a higher burden in long-term care services.
PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICES
Pubic health services offer many programs to the public designed to prevent disease and improve the quality of life for all age groups. The difference between public health and individual health is that public health focuses on the health of the entire population in a city, county, state, or the nation. These governmentfinanced health agencies concentrate their resources and expertise on keeping large segments of the population free from disease and as healthy as possible
6 big players in the health care industry
- Health care services providers
- Hospitals
- Ambulatory care services
- Health insurance
- Long-term care
- Public health services
Now let’s turn our attention to some wellknown chronic diseases (418). The chronic disease epidemic (419) has been expanding in the world at an alarming rate and shows no signs of slowing down.
1. Heart disease
- Diabetes (sugar-caused)
- Cancers
- Stroke (brain attack)
- Mental disorders (insane)
- Hypertension (high blood pressure)
- Obesity (too fat)
Another type of disease is communicable disease (420) or contagious disease. Communicable/contagious disease can be passed from one person to another. This type of disease can be caused by viruses. If you get a flu, for instance, it means you get infected (421) by the flu virus.
If you cannot breath because you have stuff inside your nose, medically speaking, you have nasal congestion (422).
There are different types of medical treatments depending on how sick you get.
If it’s not so serious, you can get prescribed drugs (423). Sometimes, it takes some more time to find what the causes of your disease are. That’s when diagnosis (424) comes into play. An diagnosis is used to identify the nature of you illness. Sometimes, you might need to take antibiotics (425), which can quickly cure your illness but the use of antibiotic given the longterm side-effects (426). If you bleed somewhere on your body, you can clean all the blood on the surface and use rubbing alcohol (427) for disinfectant (428) purposes. If you got a pain and wish to reduce it, you may be advised to take aspirin (429).
Sometimes, you don’t get sufficient vitamins from your food, you are supposed to have vitamin deficiency (430).** Eating more fruits and veggies might be a decent solution. If you don’t have enough sleep, you will suffer from **sleep deprivation (431), which is lack of sleep.
