Healthcare industry basics

Healthcare can be divided roughly into inpatient care, which is care that occurs in an overnight facility, such as a hospital, and outpatient, or ambulatory care, which is care that occurs on a same-day basis, usually in a physician’s office. Inpatient care is usually concerned with treating conditions that have progressed to a serious state or need complex interventions, and is usually costlier than outpatient care; therefore, a central goal in healthcare is to reduce the amount of care that occurs on an inpatient basis by emphasizing adequate preventive measures.

Another way to describe healthcare is by "stages of healthcare delivery." Primary care practitioners (PCPs) usually deal with the patient’s entire well-being and oversee all organ systems; in many care delivery models, they serve as "gatekeepers" to secondary and tertiary care providers. Secondary care denotes treatment by physicians specialized to treat certain diseases or organ systems, such as endocrinologists or cardiothoracic surgeons. Tertiary care is provided upon referral by a specialist and usually occurs in an inpatient setting at a facility specialized to treat very specific conditions, often via surgery.

Within healthcare, it takes a team of professionals, all having different roles, to provide optimal patient care. Physicians, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, nurses, case managers, social workers, lab technicians, and information technology professionals are just some of the other personnel you will work with directly, or indirectly, in the healthcare analytics field.