Clinic

A clinic (or outpatient clinic or ambulatory care clinic) is a healthcare facility that is primarily devoted to the care of outpatients. Clinics can be privately operated or publicly managed and funded, and typically cover the primary healthcare needs of populations in local communities, in contrast to larger hospitals which offer specialised treatments and admit inpatients for overnight stays. Most commonly, the word clinic in English refers to a general medical practice, run by one or several general practitioners, or a specialist clinic. Some clinics grow to be institutions as large as major hospitals, or become associated with a hospital or medical school, while retaining the name “clinic."

Overview

Clinics are often associated with a general medical practice, run by one or several general practitioners or clinics are usually operated by physiotherapists and psychology clinics by clinical psychologists, and so on for each health profession. Some clinics are operated in-house by employers, government organizations or hospitals and some clinical services are outsourced to private corporations, specialising in provision of health services. In China, for example, owners of those clinics do not have formal medical education. There were 659,596 village clinics in China in 2011. Health care in India, China, Russia and Africa is provided to vast rural areas by mobile health clinics or roadside dispensaries, some of which integrate traditional health practices. In India these traditional clinics provide ayurvedic medicine and unani herbal medical practice. In each of these countries traditional medicine tends to be a hereditary practice.