FAQ: Healthcare Spelling

Question: Is it healthcare, health care, or health-care?

Answer: It depends. There isn’t a single standardized spelling. Instead, the spelling varies by usage, stylistic convention, country, and personal preferences.

By Usage:

While there are variations, many sources recommend the following distinctions:

Healthcare

• should be used when referring to the industry.

• e.g. The law student planned to work in healthcare.

Health care 

can be used to describe the set of actions and practices related to providing medical attention.

• e.g. She took thorough notes on the plan for her mother’s health care.

Health-care 

• refers to the adjective form.

• e.g. The hospital hoped to hire a bilingual health-care provider.

By Country:

U.S. & Canada

• tend to prefer the two word health care.

U.K.

• favors the one word form healthcare when it’s being used as a noun.

• This includes whether it’s referring to the industry or the set of practices.

By Style:

MLA and AP

• Health care 

  • should be spelled as two words when it’s a noun.

• Health-care 

  • should be hyphenated when it’s acting as an adjective. 

based on the spelling in the Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary

APA and Chicago

• Health care 

should be used for both noun and adjective form.

In Conclusion:

Whether you should use healthcare, health care, or health-care ultimately comes down to a few factors including:

• stylistic convention

• usage

• country

• personal preference

There do seem to be a few trends, including:

•   Use of health care as a noun vs health-care as an adjective 

• Use of health care in the US. and Canada vs healthcare in the UK.

• Use of healthcare for the industry vs health care for the set of practices

None of these trends are consistent across all styles, though, so there is no hard rule. 

Individual writers and medical professionals have a range of personal preferences when it comes to spelling this word. When in doubt, you can always ask the client if there is a convention they use. Above all, be consistent!

References

1. Medical Solutions. (2019, September 30). Health Care or Healthcare – What’s the Difference? https://transformingoutcomes.3m.com/2019/09/30/health-care-or-healthcare/#:~:text=Dictionaries%3A%20The%20two%20most%20authoritative,when%20used%20as%20a%20noun

2. Arcadia. (2014, June 30). The Final Word: Healthcare vs. Health Care. https://arcadia.io/final-word-healthcare-vs-health-care/

3. Docnotes. (2020, May 31). Healthcare vs. Health Care. https://docnotes.net/2020/05/healthcare-vs-health-care.html

4. Grammarist. ( 2012, November 19). Healthcare vs. Health Care – Which One is It? https://grammarist.com/spelling/healthcare/

5. Modern Language Association of America. (2019, September 3). Should health care be spelled as two words? https://style.mla.org/spelling-the-word-health-care/

6. ProofreadingPal. (2016, July 7).  Guide to Using Hyphens in Compound Word.  https://proofreadingpal.com/proofreading-pulse/writing-guides/guide-to-using-hyphens-in-compound-words/