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A tertiary referral hospital (also called a tertiary hospital, tertiary referral center, tertiary care center, or tertiary center) is a hospital that provides tertiary care,[1] which is a level of health care obtained from specialists in a large hospital after referral from the providers of primary care and secondary care.[2] Beyond that general definition, there is no precise narrower or more formal definition, but tertiary centers usually include the following:
- a major hospital that usually has a full complement of services including pediatrics, obstetrics, general medicine, gynecology, various branches of surgery and psychiatry or
- a specialty hospital dedicated to specific sub-specialty care (pediatric centers, oncology centers, psychiatric hospitals). Patients will often be referred from smaller hospitals to a tertiary hospital for major operations, consultations with sub-specialists and when sophisticated intensive care facilities are required.
Some examples of tertiary referral center care are:
- Head and neck oncology
- Perinatology (high-risk pregnancies)
- Neonatology (high-risk newborn care)
- PET scans
- Organ transplantation
- Trauma surgery
- High-dose chemotherapy for cancer cases
- Growth and puberty disorders
- Neurology and neurosurgery
- In the UK, cases of poisoning.
See also
References
- ^ "Tertiary Care Centers - MeSH - NCBI". www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. Retrieved 2019-05-29.
- ^ "Definition of TERTIARY CARE". www.merriam-webster.com. Retrieved 2019-05-29.