A tertiary hospital, tertiary referral center or tertiary care center is a term without a formal definition. However, in the United States this term generally refers to:
- 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.
In both the United Kingdom and the United States, a tertiary referral hospital can also mean any hospital that provides tertiary care.
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.
Famous quotes containing the words tertiary and/or hospital:
“Morality is a venereal disease. Its primary stage is called virtue; its secondary stage, boredom; its tertiary stage, syphilis.”
—Karl Kraus (1874–1936)
“Radio put technology into storytelling and made it sick. TV killed it. Then you were locked into somebody else’s sighting of that story. You no longer had the benefit of making that picture for yourself, using your imagination. Storytelling brings back that humanness that we have lost with TV. You talk to children and they don’t hear you. They are television addicts. Mamas bring them home from the hospital and drag them up in front of the set and the great stare-out begins.”
—Jackie Torrence (b. 1944)