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6 UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE Hospitals, Clinics, and Hospital Networks Health care services are provided to the community by many different institutions, organizations, and individuals. Generally speaking, the basic framework of these services consists of the medical activities occurring within hospitals, clinics, laboratories, research centers, residential homes, and other health facilities. They include diagnosis, consultation, treat- ment, intervention, observation, prevention, follow-up, and rehabilitation services. These services can ultimately be provided either as a public service or to achieve a profit, and each institution can be operated by the govern- ment, by private for-profit companies, or by private not-for-profit orga- nizations (e.g., nongovernmental organizations or NGOs). To achieve universal health coverage, a health institution must provide fair, afford- able, and equitable services to everyone regardless of race, color, religion, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, ancestry, age, veteran status, disability, or social status. Regardless of how or by whom the health care service is offered, the ultimate beneficiary is always a patient. Patients are usually admitted to a facility where they receive their needed medical care. If their stay is longer than a single day, they are called inpatients (or in-patients ), while if their stay is shorter than 24 hours, they are called outpatients (or out- patients ). Whenever a patient leaves the health facility, he or she is dis- charged , although some follow-up revisits might be part of his or her current or future treatment plan (e.g., to reevaluate the progression of a condition after a few years). Outpatient or ambulatory care is usually preferred to treat many acute diseases that do not require the patient to stay overnight to perform minor surgical or diagnostic procedures to deliver preventive care and to man- age chronic conditions where hospital admission is not needed. Ambu- latory care services are often employed since they can significantly cut hospital expenditures and improve the quality of the service offered. Hospitals are health care institutions that can offer both inpatient and outpatient care, and have an organized medical and other professional staff, and medical equipment. A hospital might have multiple roles in shaping community health other than merely providing curative care. It may, for example, dispense preventive, terminal, or long-term care (LTC) and edu- cate the public about healthy lifestyle choices. To achieve universal cover- age, hospitals should organize themselves around the communityÊs needs, grant access to every citizen, and follow an ethical code of conduct built around the respect for internationally recognized human rights standards. Hospitals consist of several clinical departments that provide different types of care such as an emergency department, a specialist trauma center, surgery, or an intensive care unit. Larger facilities might also include more