Level of care

level of care

The intensity of medical care being provided by the physician or health care facility

Level of care

Primary Coordinated, comprehensive and personal care, available on both a first-contact and continuous basis; it incorporates the tasks of medical diagnosis and treatment, psychological assessment and management, personal support, communication of information about illness, prevention and health maintenance; primary care is that provided by the family physician, general practitioner and by physicians in the emergency room

Secondary That medical care available in the community hospital, comprising the bulk of in-patient medical care provided in the US; secondary care centers are equipped to provide all but the most specialized of care, surgery and diagnostic modalities

Tertiary Highly specialized medical care for Pts who are usually referred from 2º care centers, which consists in subspecialty expertise in 1. Surgery—Organ transplantation, pediatric cardiovascular surgery, stereotactic neurosurgery, and others 2. Internal medicine—Genetics, hepatology, adolescent psychiatry and others 3. Diagnostic modalities—PET–positron emission tomography and SQUID–superconducting quantum interface device scanning, color Doppler electrocardiography, electron microscopy, gene rearrangement and molecular analysis and 4. Therapeutic modalities—Experimental protocols for treating advanced and/or potentially fatal disease–eg AIDS, cancer and inborn errors of metabolism