The key difference between primary secondary and tertiary healthcare is that while the primary healthcare mainly involves in preventive health, the main concern of the other two, Secondary and Tertiary Healthcare sectors is the curative management of diseases.
The structure of the healthcare system of a country is of utmost importance. The global standards require a healthcare system to have three tiers as primary secondary and tertiary healthcare. Primary healthcare is the first tier of the healthcare services that first comes into contact with a patient. The patients identified to be having any abnormalities by the primary healthcare services are then referred to the secondary healthcare services for curative management. When the patient management requires more advanced facilities and expertise, they are referred to the tertiary centers.
CONTENTS
1. Overview and Key Difference
2. What is Primary Healthcare
3. What is Secondary Healthcare
4. What is Tertiary Healthcare
5. Side by Side Comparison – Primary Secondary vs Tertiary Healthcare in Tabular Form
6. Summary
What is Primary Healthcare?
Primary health care is the tier of the healthcare services that first comes into contact with a patient. The main services of the primary healthcare sector include maternal and child care, family planning advice, and facilities and immunization programs. Primary healthcare sector is responsible for the carrying out of some of the basic disease screening programs also.
Figure 01: Primary Healthcare
Health care professionals such as medical officers of health, public health midwives, and public health nursing officers are the key personnel who involve in providing the community with these healthcare facilities. This healthcare sector focuses on disease prevention rather than the curative management of the diseases.
What is Secondary Healthcare?
The patients identified to be having various abnormalities are referred to the secondary healthcare facilities by the primary healthcare professionals. These institutes provide the patients with the basic curative healthcare. Base hospitals and general hospitals belong to this category.
What is Tertiary Healthcare?
When there are not enough facilities or specialized health care providers for the management of a particular patient re referred to the higher centers with state of art facilities and technologies to treat the patient.
What is the Difference Between Primary Secondary and Tertiary Healthcare?
Primary health care is the Tier of the health care services that first comes into contact with a patient. The primary health care professionals refer the patients identified with various abnormalities to the secondary health care facilities. And when there are not enough facilities or specialized health care providers for the management of a particular patient, the secondary health care professionals refer the patients to tertiary healthcare centers that have state of art facilities and technologies to treat the patient.
Preventive health care is the main responsibility of the primary health care sector while secondary healthcare provides patients with the curative healthcare facilities. Tertiary healthcare, on the other hand, provides patients with more advanced curative healthcare facilities. This is the main difference between primary secondary and tertiary healthcare.
Summary – Primary Secondary vs Tertiary Healthcare
Primary health care services provide the community with preventive health care while the secondary and tertiary sectors are responsible for the provision of the curative health care. This is the main difference between primary secondary and tertiary healthcare.
Reference:
1.Parveen Kumar. Kumar and Clark’s Clinical Medicine. Edited by Michael L Clark, 8th ed.
Image Courtesy:
1. ‘doctor-inspects-a-child’ (Public Domain) via pixnio