Inpatient Care Settings and Services 

Based on Ownership

• Public Hospitals: These hospitals are owned by the federal, state, or local government. 

• Private Nonprofit Hospitals: These are hospitals that are owned and operated by community associations or other non-government organizations. Their mission is to help the community they’re located in. This hospital operates by patient fees, third-party reimbursement, donations, and endowments to cover their operating expenses. 

• Private For-Profit Hospitals: These hospitals are also known as investor-owned hospitals and are owned by individuals, partnerships, or corporations. These hospitals are operated for the financial benefit of the entity that owns the institution and they are accountable to their stockholders. 

Based on Service

• General Hospitals: These hospitals provide many services, including general and specialized medicine, general and specialized surgery, and obstetrics to meet almost all medical needs of the community it serves. It provides treatment, diagnostics, and surgical services for patients with medical conditions.  

• Specialty Hospitals: These hospitals provide diagnostics and medical treatment to inpatients with a certain type of disease or medical condition services for psychiatric care or substance abuse. The two most common specialty hospitals are rehabilitation and children's hospital. 

• Psychiatric hospitals: These hospitals provide diagnostic and treatment services for a variety of severe mental health conditions. 

• Rehabilitation Hospitals: These hospitals specialize in therapeutic services to restore the maximum level of functioning in patients who have suffered from disability issues from an accident or illness. 

• Children’s Hospitals: These hospitals are usually community hospitals that provide specialized facilities to deal with complex, severe, or chronic illnesses among children. Most of all children's hospitals have neonatal intensive care units, pediatrics intensive care units, trauma centers, and transplant services. 

Based on Length of Stay

• Short-Stay Hospitals: Short stays are 25 days or less. Patients who are admitted for this long are usually for acute conditions. 

• Long-term Care Hospitals: Long stays are usually 25 days or longer. The patients who stay for long term are those who are in need of post-acute care, but have complex medical needs and may have many chronic problems that require this long-term stay. 

Based on Location

• Urban Hospital: Urban hospitals are usually located in a county part of a metropolitan statistical area. 

• Rural Hospital: Rural hospitals are usually located in a county part of a metropolitan statistical area. 

• Swing Bed Hospitals: It is used for acute care or skilled nursing care as needed. They enabled many rural hospitals to survive during a period of declining occupancy rates. It also enabled rural residents to access post-acute nursing care services which were not available in many rural communities.   

• Critical Access Hospitals: This is a rural hospital that provides essential healthcare services, including emergency care, at an affordable price. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) designates hospitals as CAHs if they meet certain requirements