Provider, hospital, surgeon: how LimbAtlas uses these terms

LimbAtlas uses provider as its general term for the organisation a profile describes — the one you research and whose official website the profile links to. Limb lengthening is offered by organisations of quite different kinds, so 'clinic' would describe only some of them.

Each provider has one or more provider types. These labels describe how an organisation is structured. They are not a measure of quality, safety or results, and this guide does not compare outcomes between them.

A facility is a physical place: a hospital, a clinic, a rehabilitation building or a patient residence. A surgeon is a person. A provider may be the same organisation as the hospital where it operates, a department or programme within a hospital, a practice based at a hospital it does not run, or a surgeon team that operates at one or more hospitals.

On a profile, the Facilities section names each facility a source connects to the provider, what it is used for — surgery, consultations, rehabilitation or accommodation — and the relationship as the source states it. LimbAtlas does not infer ownership from wording such as 'our centre', and does not connect a provider to a facility because the names or branding look alike.

When a provider is a surgeon team, the team and the hospital are separate: the surgeons may operate at a hospital they do not run, and the hospital's own services, such as its rehabilitation department, may or may not form part of the pathway. Asking who performs the operation, in which hospital, and who is responsible for each later stage makes a surgeon team comparable with other provider types.

Published patient guidance on travelling for surgery suggests researching both the clinician and the facility. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) refers to internationally accredited facilities while cautioning that accreditation does not guarantee a good outcome.

Hospital and surgical clinic are used in their ordinary sense, based on how each organisation describes itself in its own official materials. On their own, neither label says which services around surgery the organisation provides. An all-in-one patient care center is defined more narrowly: an organisation that brings surgery, accommodation, rehabilitation and support services together under one coordinated offering.

One coordinated offering does not have to mean one building. An all-in-one center's published materials may not say whether surgery takes place on its own premises or in a separate hospital, which is why the surgical facility is recorded as a separate fact.

Rehabilitation may take place at the provider's own centre, at the hospital where surgery happens, at a separate linked facility, or be arranged elsewhere, including near the patient's home. Some providers state that rehabilitation is part of care without saying where. Profiles record which of these the sources describe, and the guide Understanding rehabilitation explains why the arrangement matters.

Physiotherapy delivered as part of a provider's own surgical pathway does not make it a rehabilitation center. That provider type is used only where a source describes rehabilitation as a distinct service.

Provider type and care model are recorded independently because one does not predict the other. A hospital may offer surgery only, or it may also arrange rehabilitation and accommodation; a surgical clinic may offer either a standalone or a coordinated pathway. For that reason LimbAtlas does not infer what a provider coordinates from what kind of organisation it is.

For each provider it can help to note, service by service, whether rehabilitation, accommodation, transport, coordination and follow-up after returning home are delivered by the provider itself, arranged through another organisation, or not offered.

Some patients use an organisation that coordinates treatment without performing surgery itself. The CDC notes that people travelling for treatment often use private companies or medical concierge services to identify healthcare professionals or clinics, and AAOS patient information notes that a variety of companies offer travel and treatment bundles. LimbAtlas lists such organisations as medical travel organizations, a separate provider type, and does not treat them as equivalent to the providers delivering the care.

No provider type or care model is presented here as safer, easier or better than another. A coordinated offering organises logistics differently from a surgery-only pathway; whether that difference matters depends on a patient's own circumstances, and the clinical questions — method, surgical team, rehabilitation, complications — still need to be asked of every provider.