Help to understand the word "practice

Hi,

I have got some problems with the word "practice" in some contexts.
The sentence is the following: We had research grants from the federal government, as well as a large hospital-based practice that included treating patients who neeeded to have their communications skills evaluated, for instance, after a stroke.

Well, what is practice in this context?

Thank you very, very much for your help.

Best regards,

Elaine Pepe
São Paulo/Brazil

This from the American Heritage Dictionary On-line:-

4. Exercise of an occupation or profession: the practice of law/medicine.

In your sentence, it simply means a group of doctors or medical professionals who, I would guess, probably specialised in speech therapy.

For the record, in UK English at least, the verb is always spelled "practise" and the noun "practice" - similarly with the verbal "license" and the nominal "licence" and (the easy way to remember this) the verb "advise" and the noun "advice". I however seem to remember that transatlantically they play rather fast and loose with this rule and probably ignore it entirely, knowing them.

Only foreigners spell license licence.