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Care Settings & Facilities

Emergency Services

Emergency Services are the hospital-based clinical capabilities for evaluating and treating sudden, severe illness or injury, including the emergency department, trauma response, and resuscitation resources available around the clock to walk-in and ambulance-arriving patients.

What are Emergency Services?

Emergency Services are the clinical capabilities a hospital maintains to evaluate and treat sudden, severe illness or injury. They include the emergency department itself along with the resuscitation, trauma response, and supporting resources available continuously to patients who arrive on their own or by ambulance.

These services are designed to operate around the clock and to accept patients regardless of whether their condition was anticipated. They combine specialized staff, equipment, and rapid access to imaging, laboratory testing, and inpatient admission.

Why do Emergency Services matter for surgery centers?

Emergency Services provide the definitive care that cannot be delivered in settings built for routine or elective treatment. They are the backstop for the entire system when a condition exceeds what a clinic, urgent care, or surgery center can handle.

Because an ambulatory surgery center does not maintain its own emergency department, its safety model depends on timely access to a hospital's emergency services through a transfer arrangement. The distance to and relationship with a receiving hospital is a practical factor in how an ASC plans for the rare event that requires escalation.

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