Health care law presents some unique legal issues. To understand these issues, one must first have some understanding of health care providers or hospitals.

There are a number of ways to classify or view health care providers or hospitals. They can be classified by the type of health care they provide. They may provide acute care, which is the type of care one seeks when they have an immediate problem. They may also provide chronic care, which is the type of care one receives for a longer-term problem.

Health care providers can also be classified as public or private. Public health care providers are those that are government funded. Private health care providers are non-profit or for-profit. Non-profits are run by religious organizations or as part of academic health centers typically, and they receive tax exemptions. For-profit hospitals are run like businesses.

Health care providers, particularly hospitals, can also be classified as teaching or community health care providers. Teaching hospitals are generally thought to be less efficient and the patients are more expensive to treat given that these hospitals get more involved or interesting cases. The doctors may be employees of a university and practice at the hospital, but still not be employees of hospital.

Health care providers can also be classified as rural or urban. Rural hospitals may not be able to draw in physicians. They may not have as many specialists. There is usually more selection with urban hospitals. There are more specialists in urban hospitals; and they generally have better technology. There is more competition among them. The people they treat tend to be poorer, and sicker.

With these concepts in mind, we can now consider how hospitals are organized.