Tertiary referral hospital

A tertiary referral hospital (also called a tertiary hospital, tertiary referral center, tertiary care center, or tertiary center) is a hospital that provides tertiary care,^[1] which is a level of health care obtained from specialists in a large hospital after referral from the providers of primary care and secondary care.^[2] Beyond that general definition, there is no precise narrower or more formal definition, but tertiary centers usually include the following:

• a major hospital that usually has a full complement of services including pediatrics, obstetrics, general medicine, gynecology, various branches of surgery and psychiatry or
• a specialty hospital dedicated to specific sub-specialty care (pediatric centers, oncology centers, psychiatric hospitals). Patients will often be referred from smaller hospitals to a tertiary hospital for major operations, consultations with sub-specialists and when sophisticated intensive care facilities are required.

Some examples of tertiary referral center care are:

• Head and neck oncology
• Perinatology (high-risk pregnancies)
• Neonatology (high-risk newborn care)
• PET scans
• Organ transplantation
• Trauma surgery
• High-dose chemotherapy for cancer cases
• Growth and puberty disorders
• Neurology and neurosurgery
• In the UK, cases of poisoning.