STAT Keeps 'Health Care' as Two Words, Defying AP
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- STAT decided to continue writing "health care" as two words, bucking the Associated Press Stylebook's April shift to the one-word "healthcare" and remaining consistent with its own style since its founding more than a decade ago.
- STAT's director of editorial operations, a longtime copy editor, made the call after consulting colleagues and asking readers, framing the two-word version as encompassing both the business side and the patient side of medicine.
- Of 210 reader votes, approximately 60% favored "healthcare" as a single word, with supporters citing industry usage, linguistic evolution (comparing it to "babysitter" and "childcare"), and efficiency.
- STAT's stated rationale is that "health care" as two words puts more emphasis on two distinct concepts and signals the many existing types of care — prenatal care, medical care, cardiac care — which are themselves written as separate words.
- Several readers argued the two-word form carries philosophical weight: physician Carole Allen said there are "many kinds of care" and attending to health is only one; Andrew Shih argued "healthcare" commodifies the term while "health care" connects to the human beings at its center.
- A federal employee reader enforcing federal health-care laws noted that federal law consistently uses "health care" as two words, while others in the industry pointed out that the health care industry itself has largely moved to "healthcare."
Why it matters: A major health-news outlet is deliberately diverging from the dominant U.S. style standard, meaning writers and readers will see "health care" on STAT even as the AP and much of the industry standardize on "healthcare" — and the editor is going against roughly 60% of the outlet's own polled readers, signaling the style fight is philosophical, not just grammatical.
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