1. Emergency Outpatient:
A person requiring emergency care as a result of sudden severe illness or accident the need of emergency care is determined clinically.
image source: emergencymedicine.pitt.edu
However, there are conditions considered by the patient or his/her relatives as requiring emergency services; the perception of “emergency” by patients or their relatives may be different from that of physicians.
2. Referred Outpatient:
ADVERTISEMENTS:
A person referred to the outpatient department by a private practitioner or other physicians from one clinical discipline to the other, for specific diagnostic or treatment procedures or opinion, and who will (or should) return to the referring physician for further care and disposal.
3. General Outpatient:
A person not referred by other physician who comes to the outpatient clinic on his own and who is given diagnostic and/or therapeutic services on an outpatient basis, for other than an emergency condition.
General outpatients, i.e. those who come to the outpatient department on their own with a variety of ailments and regard the hospital as some kind of dispensary, form the bulk of the users of the outpatient department in government run hospitals. A sizeable proportion of them may come for minor ailments because for them the hospital represents the only available source of medical care.
4. Outpatient Visit:
An outpatient visit is the visit of a person at the outpatient department to receive service. The visit may be:
ADVERTISEMENTS:
i. New outpatient visit outpatient visit by a person for the first time, or
ii. Repeat outpatient visit outpatient visit by a person subsequent to initial outpatient visit.
5. Unit of Service:
Unit of service is a measurable part of the volume of service rendered in diagnostic or therapeutic facilities of the hospital, expressed in terms of time and quantity.
6. Service Time:
Service time is the time taken by the doctor to diagnose a patient’s illness and in instructing him or her, and includes taking history, examination, making case note and prescription writing and signing requisitions for special medicines or investigations.