A<unk>  (where poly means "many"; not to be confused with the homonym<unk> , where poli means "city" and which is sometimes used for a hospital's outpatient department) is a clinic or health care facility that provides both general and specialist examinations and treatments for a wide variety of diseases and injuries to outpatients and is usually independent of a hospital. When a<unk>  is so large that it is in fact a hospital, it is also called a general hospital. The term was rare in English until recently and is still very rare in Northern America, but examples of its use are the large outpatient clinics (healthcare centers) operated by the government in England and Singapore that are able to provide a wider range of services than a standard doctor's (GP) office as well as The<unk>  in Seattle, Washington. Most other languages use a cognate of the even rarer English term "policlinic" (spelled similarly to and pronounced the same as the English term<unk> ") for outpatient departments (outpatient clinics) of (public) hospitals and for large independent (public) clinics for outpatients. Some languages, for example French, specifically use a cognate of<unk> " to refer to private outpatient clinics. Due to the different meanings of "poly" and "poli", it was traditionally considered incorrect to use the English term<unk> " for European<unk> s. In addition, European<unk> s (called "poliklinik", "policlinique", "поликлиника" poliklinika, or similarly in other languages) are more like hospitals or are part of a hospital and are public and therefore free or inexpensive whereas<unk> s are traditionally much less structured and comprehensive organizations consisting of a usually haphazard collection of more or less independent offices of private doctors. The<unk> s in England however use the term<unk>  more or less like the term<unk>  and its cognates in other languages.
Polyclinic
Clinic escort
Creosote
Pharmasave
Serostatus
Pessary
Lipotuck
Winpepi