Long-term care in the context of "Chronic illness"

Elderly care, or simply eldercare (also known in parts of the English-speaking world as aged care), serves the needs of old adults. It encompasses assisted living, adult daycare, long-term care, nursing homes (often called residential care), hospice care, and home care.

Elderly care emphasizes the social and personal requirements of senior citizens who wish to age with dignity while needing assistance with daily activities and with healthcare. Much elderly care is unpaid.

Acute care is a branch of secondary health care where a patient receives active but short-term treatment for a severe injury or episode of illness, an urgent medical condition, or during recovery from surgery. In medical terms, care for acute health conditions is the opposite from chronic care, or longer-term care.

Acute care services are generally delivered by teams of health care professionals from a range of medical and surgical specialties. Acute care may require a stay in a hospital emergency department, ambulatory surgery center, urgent care centre or other short-term stay facility, along with the assistance of diagnostic services, surgery, or follow-up outpatient care in the community. Hospital-based acute inpatient care typically has the goal of discharging patients as soon as they are deemed healthy and stable. Acute care settings include emergency department, intensive care, coronary care, cardiology, neonatal intensive care, and many general areas where the patient could become acutely unwell and require stabilization and transfer to another higher dependency unit for further treatment.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is a federal agency within the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that administers the Medicare program and works in partnership with state governments to administer Medicaid, the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and health insurance portability standards. In addition to these programs, CMS has other responsibilities, including the administrative simplification standards from the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), quality standards in long-term care facilities (more commonly referred to as nursing homes) through its survey and certification process, clinical laboratory quality standards under the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments, and oversight of HealthCare.gov.CMS was previously known as the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) until 2001.

CMS actively inspects and reports on every nursing home in the United States. This includes maintaining the 5-Star Quality Rating System.

Residential care refers to long-term care given to adults or children who stay in a residential setting rather than in their own home or family home.

There are various residential care options available, depending on the needs of the individual. People with disabilities, mental health problems, Intellectual disability, Alzheimer's disease, dementia or who are frail aged are often cared for at home by paid or voluntary caregivers, such as family and friends, with additional support from home care agencies. However, if home-based care is not available or not appropriate for the individual, residential care may be required.

The National Health Service (NHS) is the publicly funded healthcare system in England, and one of the four National Health Service systems in the United Kingdom. It is the second largest single-payer healthcare system in the world after the Brazilian Sistema Único de Saúde. Primarily funded by the government from taxation and National Insurance contributions, and overseen by the Department of Health and Social Care, the NHS provides healthcare to all legal UK residents, with most services free at the point of use for most people. The NHS also conducts research through the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR).

A founding principle of the NHS was providing free healthcare at the point of use. The 1942 cross-party Beveridge Report established the principles of the NHS which was implemented by the government, whilst under Labour control in 1948 and the NHS was officially launched at Park Hospital in Davyhulme, near Manchester, England (now known as Trafford General Hospital). Labour's Minister for Health Aneurin Bevan is popularly considered the NHS's founder, despite never formally being referred to as such. In practice, "free at the point of use" normally means that anyone legitimately registered with the system (i.e. in possession of an NHS number), that is a UK resident in clinical need of treatment, can access medical care, without payment. The exceptions include NHS services such as eye tests, dental care, prescriptions and aspects of long-term care. These charges are usually lower than equivalent services offered privately and many are free to vulnerable or low-income patients.