Industries Consulting Services Education E-marketplace Financial Services Healthcare Provider Insurance Legal Manufacturing Realestate Retail and Wholesale Software Telecommunication

Introduction

Healthcare is a vast field of varied functional business areas; composed of a myriad of business principles, policies, processes, practices, and procedures. Healthcare, as an industry, consists of manufacturing for: artificial body components, diagnosis and treatment equipment, and drugs and medications. It also has a logistics aspect as related to: the tracking and delivery of medical supplies, prepositioning of medical equipment, and the unique transport of injured people. The area most commonly known includes the wide field of healthcare specialties and subspecialties, including: research, development, education, and delivery of care that covers preventative, curative, cosmetic, critical care, or optional and elective treatments and surgeries. The United States Bureau of Labor and Statistics wrote, “As the largest industry in 2006, health care provided 14 million jobs – 13.6 million jobs for wage and salary workers and about 438,000 jobs for the self-employed.” ₁ It is the very size of this industry makes it so difficult to define in a short statement, leading not to the lack of definitions but to the abundance of definitions; a few of which are:

1. The World Health Organization (WHO), “Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”₂

2. The American Heritage Medical Dictionary, “The prevention, treatment, and management of illness and the preservation of mental and physical well-being through the services offered by the medical and allied health professions.”₃

3. Wikipedia, “Health care, or healthcare, refers to the treatment and management of illness, and the preservation of health through services offered by the medical, dental, pharmaceutical, clinical laboratory sciences (in vitro diagnostics), nursing, and allied health professions. Health care embraces all the goods and services designed to promote health, including preventive, curative and palliative interventions, whether directed to individuals or to populations.” ₄

The industry of healthcare, whether publicly or privately practiced, eludes simple definition.
 

References

1. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Office of Occupational Statistics and Employment Projections Suite 2135, 2 Massachusetts Avenue, NE Washington, DC 20212-0001, http://www.bls.gov/oco/cg/cgs035.htm

2. Preamble to the Constitution of the World Health Organization as adopted by the International Health Conference, New York, 19-22 June, 1946; signed on 22 July 1946 by the representatives of 61 States (Official Records of the World Health Organization, no. 2, p. 100) and entered into force on 7 April 1948, http://www.who.int/about/definition/en/print.html

3. The American Heritage® Medical Dictionary Copyright © 2007, 2004 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company, http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/health%20care