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If you plan on building a medical facility, either as an entrepreneur, practicing physician, or community health advocate, you have many options. While the majority of people assume large hospitals are the only option for opening healthcare facilities, numerous options range in size, scope, and practice.
The healthcare industry is growing rapidly. Since the world’s population continues to grow, there’s a greater need for facilities and healthcare employees. Let’s take a closer look at 14 types of facilities in healthcare that you can open.
Inside this blog:
1) Birth Centers 👩🍼
A birth center is a healthcare facility that specifically focuses on providing a midwife experience for birthing mothers. They aim to create a birth environment that is comfortable, cost-effective, and accessible for families.
Birth centers are great places for mothers who work with midwives or doulas. They typically offer different amenities than hospitals, such as tubs for water births. It’s important to note that these centers are not typically equipped with surgeons like a hospital would be. So, in the case of needing a C-section or a neonatal intensive care unit, the mother and child would be transferred to the nearest hospital.
Birth centers are meant to accommodate pregnancies without any known risks or complications. Further medical intervention is always taken when needed.
2) Hospice Homes
“Hospice” is a care philosophy dedicated to patients nearing the end of their lives. Hospice homes are specific healthcare facilities that specialize in end-of-life care.
Beyond medical support, hospice homes provide emotional and spiritual support for dying patients and their families. The goal of these facilities is to ensure the patient is as comfortable as possible at the end of their life by providing palliative care.
Hospice homes feel much more “homey” than impersonal hospital rooms and typically have more generous visitor policies to allow for family support.
3) Hospitals 🏥
Of course, we had to include hospitals on this list. As the biggest healthcare facility on this list, hospitals are all-encompassing medical facilities.
Size and location can vary greatly, but most hospitals have intensive care and non-intensive care units.
- Intensive care units: These units deal with emergencies, serious illnesses, and serious injuries. Any potentially life-threatening issue is treated here.
- Non-intensive care units: Non-threatening issues are treated in these units, such as minor surgeries, physical rehabilitation, childbirth, annual physicals, vaccinations, routine checkups, and more.
4) Clinics
“Clinic” is a very broad, overarching term that encompasses many facilities. In general, clinics are facilities that diagnose and treat outpatients. They can include:
- Dental clinics
- Eye clinics
- Dermatology private practices
- Medical spa
- Family medicine private practices
- Plastic surgery clinics
- Speech therapy clinics
- And more!
Clinics offer preventative care and important diagnoses while remaining as convenient as possible. You can even find “walk-in clinics” or “minute clinics” inside convenience stores, pharmacies, and now airports.
5) Mental Health + Addiction Treatment Centers
You can find mental health facilities and addiction treatment centers as separate entities, or they may be combined into one. These centers can be inpatient or outpatient as they assist patients through the different stages of their healing processes.
Mental health centers treat things like:
- Depression
- OCD (Obsessive-compulsive disorder)
- Suicidal ideation
- PTSD (Post-traumatic stress disorder)
- Anxiety disorders
- Behavioral disorders
Addiction treatment centers help people who are struggling with addictions to:
- Alcohol
- Drugs
- Behavioral addictions
6) Nursing Homes
Nursing homes offer long-term living arrangements for patients who need persistent medical care that’s too serious to manage at home but isn’t severe enough to require hospitalization. Most nursing homes create a homey atmosphere that helps patients adjust to their living situation.
Many nursing homes also offer medical services like occupational and speech therapy, assistance with prescription medications, and appropriate exercise classes. Most patients in nursing homes are over the age of 65, but they are also appropriate facilities for younger patients with long-term illnesses that need care beyond what their families can provide.
7) Physical Therapy (Orthopedic) Rehabilitation Centers 🚶
If someone is recovering from an injury or surgery or has chronic pain, they might see a physical therapist at an orthopedic center. Orthopedic medicine deals with muscles and bones. These centers offer:
- Evaluation and diagnosis of the problem
- Preventative care
- Treatment and rehabilitation work for bone, muscle, and joint conditions
Many rehabilitation centers provide multiple therapy services, including physical therapy, occupational therapy, and speech therapy. All these processes help people gain or regain the skills they need to maintain as much of their mobility and independence as possible.
8) Urgent Care
When someone needs on-demand healthcare that isn’t severe enough for the emergency room but can’t wait for an appointment at their regular doctor’s office, that’s when they turn to urgent care centers. Providers in urgent care centers can perform many services, such as:
- Diagnosing viral illnesses
- Running strep tests
- Treating limb fractures
- Performing x-rays
- Drawing and testing blood
- Running urine tests
If a problem is too serious for urgent care, the practitioners will refer the patient to a hospital or specialist or call an ambulance to take the patient to the emergency room.
9) Imaging + Radiology Centers 🩻
Imaging and radiology centers specifically provide diagnostic imaging services like:
- CT scans
- X-rays
- MRIs
- Ultrasounds
Outpatient facilities that focus on these services help keep costs down and allow convenient scheduling for patients. However, more urgent cases are typically handled by a hospital.
10) Dialysis Centers
Dialysis is a process that filters and cleans the blood artificially. This process is required for patients with kidney disease as their kidneys can’t perform the cleaning process that functioning kidneys normally do.
Some patients with kidney disease need dialysis up to three times a week to avoid fatal complications. Dialysis centers exist to meet the high demand for this procedure and lessen the strain on hospitals.
11) Diabetes Education Centers
Over 30 million people in the United States have diabetes, and 1 in 5 of them don’t even know they have it. Since so many people have this serious disease that is the seventh leading cause of death in the country, diabetes education centers rose up to help patients learn more about diabetes, manage their disease, and help people lower their risk of getting it.
Diabetes education centers offer support groups, classes, and patient & family education in addition to many other resources to help patients live the healthiest lives they can.
12) Blood Banks + Plasma Donation Centers 🩸
Many patients need to be donated blood or plasma to recover from an injury or sustain their health through a persistent disease. Blood and plasma cannot be manufactured, so they must be donated by people who are willing to give.
Blood banks allow donors to donate blood and platelets that can be used for life-saving transplants in people who desperately need it. There are also plasma donation centers where people can give the plasma from their blood for the same purposes.
13) Ambulatory Surgical Centers
Typically, surgeries are only performed in hospitals. However, minor outpatient surgeries can also be performed at ambulatory surgery centers. These surgical centers allow patients to receive minor surgeries at a lower cost than a hospital, and they also reduce the risk of infection exposures.
These healthcare facilities don’t provide diagnostic services. They only take patients who have been referred for surgery by a private practice or hospital.
14) Community Health Centers 🤝
Finally, community health centers are a fantastic addition to any community. They are normally found in larger cities, but they definitely exist in smaller towns as well. A community health center is a patient-directed organization that strives to break down the barriers to health access for under-served people.
These centers are run by the community and for the community, and they often offer services like:
- Strep and COVID-19 testing
- Sexual health screening
- Preventative care checkups
- Counseling services
- Diagnostic services
- Health education
Health centers are not the same as free clinics. While free clinics are funded by donations, community health centers receive grants, federal funding, and insurance payments.
Types of Facilities in Healthcare: A World of Possibilities
As you can see, there are numerous types of facilities in healthcare, and they are all beneficial in one way or another. If you’re thinking of opening a healthcare facility in your community, you can’t go wrong with any of these options.
And when you need a general contracting partner who is well-versed in designing and building medical facilities, you can count on the skilled team at APX Construction Group. Our years of experience and dedicated customer support guarantee to set your business venture up for success.
Contact us today to get started!
