outpatient

Pluraloutpatients

1. 1
   nouncountable

   A person who receives treatment at a hospital or clinic without being admitted to stay overnight.

   The surgeon treated her as an outpatient, discharging her within hours of the procedure.

   Outpatients waiting for blood tests filled the morning waiting room.

   Oppositeinpatient

   Note

   The word is simply out- plus patient: someone treated who goes out again instead of staying. Its counterpart is inpatient, the patient given a bed. Placed before another noun, as in an NHS outpatient clinic, it shades into the adjective for same-day care, and such clinics can sit far from the ward, even in an empty shop at Birmingham New Street station.

2. 2
   adjective

   Given to a patient without requiring an overnight stay in the hospital.

   The procedure is outpatient, allowing patients to recover at home the same day.

   Many minor operations are now performed in outpatient clinics.

   Similarambulatory

   Oppositeinpatient

   Note

   The adjective is an either-or label: care is outpatient or it is not. Policy speech still bends it into a comparison. The United States Commission on the Future Structure of Veterans Health Care heard in 1991 that care "is more outpatient than inpatient." Whitacre said in 1994 that health care "is going more outpatient than inpatient." In careful writing, keep it absolute: outpatient surgery, or the procedure is outpatient.

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