Ambulatory care refers to which set of services?

• A. All non-hospital health services.
• B. Inpatient hospital services.
• C. Only urgent care.
• D. Only home health services.

Answer: (A)

Ambulatory care is care delivered on an outpatient basis, meaning you don’t stay in a hospital overnight. It covers a wide range of settings outside the inpatient hospital environment, such as physician offices, clinics, urgent care centers, ambulatory surgery centers, and home health visits. Because the focus is on services that do not require admission to a hospital, the broad description “All non-hospital health services” best fits. Inpatient hospital services involve staying in the hospital, which is not ambulatory, and the other options—focusing only on urgent care or only on home health—are too narrow to capture the full outpatient, non-hospital scope.