Hospitals and medical centers are very complex operations, treating thousands of patients, not yearly, but monthly. Some patients visit the hospital for routine tests or outpatient imaging services, others to give birth, many face life threatening emergencies, and some will not leave the institution alive?so is the daily routine of a modern medical center whether in San Marcos, Texas, Shanghai, China, or Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. This text is designed to simplify the complexity of the medical center by breaking it down into manageable portions. The reader will be guided not only through the medical, surgical, ancillary and support services, the financial center responsible for accounting, billing, collecting and the ever important budget. The reader should be able to better understand the necessity of quality improvement, patient safety, and accreditation. The Fourth Edition features new contributing authors for each chapter?experts on issues such as hospital finance, medical records, laboratory science, nursing, and more. Using a consistent framework, the chapters are woven together to provide seamless instruction for your students. The text begins with a history of hospitals, hospital leadership and the board, then spans to the hands-on care-givers such as the medical staff, nurses, lab, imaging, pharmacy and various therapists, then covers ancillary and support services and the all to important finance division. The text is designed for healthcare students of all types, whether clinical such as medical students, nursing, physical therapy, respiratory, or laboratory, or non-clinical students such as healthcare administration, health information management, or healthcare finance?anyone seeking a macro view of today?s hospital delivery system. The text is an all encompassing examination of hospitals, what they are and how they work.