There are over 6,500 hospitals in the US, ranging from single building facilities to huge, multi-building campuses of medical centers with thousands of beds, and university hospital training centers employing many thousands of people, as well as VA Veterans\' Administration hospitals, mental health institutes and specialty hospitals.
Different hospitals may provide different levels of care, such as: primary care, which is provided by most hospitals; acute care for patients who are critically ill or injured; tertiary care which includes medical education and complex care; subacute care for patients who need to be hospitalized, but whose life is not threatened; swing-bed care, where the patient needs skilled nursing and nursing facility beds are not available.
There are about 115 million total visits to hospital emergency rooms each year in the US, and high tech solutions are being adopted to deal with life-and-death situations. More and more emergency medical technicians and paramedics are being trained to help handle this load. However, many uninsured patients use emergency facilities as their only health care provider.
