Starting with Oracle 11gR2, Oracle changed their patching strategy.
Previously, a patch set was supposed to be downloaded and installed into an existing ORACLE_HOME.
After 11.2, a "patch set" is really a full release, bundled in a number of zip files.
The default patching method is the "out-out-place", which means that every time customers need to upgrade to a new patch set (say, 11.2.0.4), a new ORACLE_HOME should be created, and the new binaries should be installed here.
So you will potentially end up with a number of ORACLE_HOME on your server, and you can choose to run your database out of either of these, upgrading whenever you please.
See Mike Dietrich's post about the same topic for more details.
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