ABSTRACT
Patients can enter a hospital in three ways: as an outpatient after a referral from a general practitioner, as an emergency patient in the case of immediate need of specialist treatment and as an inpatient. Inpatient admissions can be of two types:
SUMMARY
scheduled or unscheduled. Scheduled inpatient admissions, also called elective patients, are selected from a waiting list or are given an appointment for an admission date. Unscheduled inpatient admissions, emergency admissions, concern patients that are admitted immediately as a consequence of a medical decision by a specialist at the outpatient department or at the emergency department. In this chapter we will concentrate on elective inpatient admissions.
