Key Acronyms

The National Alliance for Health Information Technology (NAHIT) defines these terms:

Note: The NAHIT ceased operation on September 30, 2009.

Read their Report: Defining Key Health IT Terms

 

What Is An Electronic Medical Record?

An electronic record of health-related information on an individual that can be created, gathered, managed, and consulted by authorized clinicians and staff within one health care organization.

  

What Is An Electronic Health Record (EHR)?

An electronic record of health-related information on an individual that conforms to nationally recognized interoperability standards and that can be created, managed, and consulted by authorized clinicians and staff across more than one health care organization.

  

What Is A Personal Health Record?

An electronic record of health-related information on an individual that conforms to nationally recognized interoperability standards and that can be drawn from multiple sources while being managed, shared, and controlled by the individual.

  
Standards Pocket Reference Guide

  • HL7 (Health Level 7), the standard for electronic interchange of clinical, financial and administrative info among healthcare oriented computer systems. A not-for-profit volunteer organization, it develops specifications, the most widely used of which is the messaging standard that enables disparate health care applications to exchange key sets of clinical and administrative data.
  • CCD (Continuity of Care Document), Prior to the approval of the CCD as an ANSI Standard in 2007, electronic clinical document exchange could utilize one of two formats: HL7 Clinical Document Architecture (CDA) or ASTM Continuity of Care Record (CCR). In an effort to combine the two closely related formats, the Continuity of Care Document was created. CCD harmonizes the two separate standards by using CCR within the broader context of CDA. It shares summary information about the patient in an easy-to-read format, using CCD templates to constrain the data. The information can be read by the human eye or processed by a machine (such as an EMR system), and can be sent electronically or manually carried by the patient.
  • NCPDP Script (National Counsil for Prescription Drug Programs), the SCRIPT document was developed for transmitting prescription information electronically between prescribers, providers, and other entities. The standard addresses the electronic transmission of new prescriptions, changes of prescriptions, prescription refill requests, prescription fill status notifications, cancellation notifications, relaying of medication history, and transactions for long-term care.
  • X12 v.4010A1, the standards provide structure for the electronic representation of health care claims between entities. The standards provide a means to encode business documents so that they may be interpreted by a computer application. The documents are organized as delimited data, meaning data is separated by “delimiter” characters rather than by fixed length fields and records. The standards provide means to organize this data into business documents called Transaction Sets, group these into groups of related documents called Functional Groups, and wrap these in an envelope called an Interchange.
  • QRDA (Quality Reporting Document Architecture), an electronic data standard for healthcare information systems to use in communicating patient level quality measurement data across disparate systems.
  • GIPSE (Geocoded Interoperable Population Summary Exchange, formerly AMDS, Aggregate Minimal Data Set), a simple web-enabled user interface (UI) that will allow public health professionals to select biosurveillance services that adhere to the AMDS.
  • NQF (National Quality Forum), a nonprofit organization that aims to improve the quality of healthcare for all Americans through fulfillment of its three-part mission, Setting national priorities and goals for performance improvement; endorsing national consensus standards for measuring and publicly reporting on performance; and promoting the attainment of national goals through education and outreach programs.

Vocabulary Standards

  • SNOMED CT (Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine — Clinical Terms), used for clinical problems and procedures. It is a systematically organized computer processable collection of medical terminology covering most areas of clinical information such as diseases, findings, procedures, microorganisms, pharmaceuticals etc. It allows a consistent way to index, store, retrieve, and aggregate clinical data across specialties and sites of care. It also helps organizing the content of medical records, reducing the variability in the way data is captured, encoded and used for clinical care of patients and research.
  • UNII (Unique Ingredient Identifier),used for ingredient allergies. The UNII is a non- proprietary, free, unique, unambiguous, non semantic, alphanumeric identifier based on a substance’s molecular structure and/or descriptive information.
  • LOINC (Logical Observation Identifiers Names and Codes), used for Lab tests. facilitate the exchange and pooling of clinical results for clinical care, outcomes management, and research by providing a set of universal codes and names to identify laboratory and other clinical observations.
  • UCUM (Unified Code for Units of Measure), used for units of measure. A code system intended to include all units of measures being contemporarily used in international science, engineering, and business. The purpose is to facilitate unambiguous electronic communication of quantities together with their units. The focus is on electronic communication, as opposed to communication between humans. A typical application of The Unified Code for Units of Measure are electronic data interchange (EDI) protocols.

Administrative Terminology

  • CAQH (Council for Affordable Quality Healthcare), an unprecedented nonprofit alliance of health plans and trade associations, is simplifying healthcare administration through industry initiatives.
  • CORE (Committee on Operating Rules for Information Exchange), a multi-stakeholder initiative created, organized and facilitated by CAQH. The operating rules enable healthcare providers to quickly and securely obtain reliable healthcare eligibility and benefits information, Check claim status transactions and receipts electronically.
  • HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), the Privacy Rule provides federal protections for personal health information held by covered entities and gives patients an array of rights with respect to that information. At the same time, the Privacy Rule is balanced so that it permits the disclosure of personal health information needed for patient care and other important purposes.

Legacy and Proprietary Coding

What’s That?

  • API – Application Programming Interface
  • ARRA – American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009
  • ASP – Application Service Provider
  • ATNA – Audit Trail and Node Authentication
  • BHIE – Bidirectional Health Information Exchange
  • CAH – Critical Access Hospital
  • CBO – Community-Based Organization
  • CCD – Continuity of Care Document (CCR + CDA became CCD)
  • CCHIT – Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology
  • CCR – Continuity of Care Record
  • CDA – Clinical Document Architecture
  • CDO – care delivery organization
  • CDS – clinical decision support
  • CDSS – clinical decision support system
  • CFR – Code of Federal Regulations
  • CHC – Connected Healthcare Community
  • CHR – Community Health Records
  • CLIA – Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments
  • CMIO – Chief Medical Information/Informatics Officer
  • CPOE – Computerized physician order entry
  • DBE – Documenting by exception
  • EMR/EHR – electronic medical/health record
  • FACA – Federal Advisory Committee Act
  • FHA - Federal Health Architecture
  • FIPS – Federal Information Processing Standards
  • FOA – Funding Opportunity Announcement
  • FOSS – Free and Open Source/Solutions Software
  • FQHC – Federally Qualified Health Center
  • HIE – Health Information Exchanges
  • HIM – Health Information Management
  • HIO – Health Information Organization
  • HIPAA – Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act
  • HIT – Health Information Technology
  • HITECH – Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act
  • HPSA – Health Professional Shortage Areas
  • ICE – Integrated Community EHR
  • IFR – Interim Final Rule
  • IT – Information Technology
  • LOINC – Logical Observations Identifiers, Names, Codes
  • MITA - Medicaid Information Technology Architecture
  • NHIN - Nationwide Health Information Network
  • NPRM – Notice of Proposed Rulemaking
  • NLP – Natural Language Processing
  • ONC – Office of the National Coordinator
  • ONCHIT – Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology
  • PACS – picture archiving and communication systems
  • PCMH – Patient-Centered Medical Home
  • PHI – Personal Health Information or Protected Health Information
  • PHR – Personal Health Record
  • PMS – Practice Management System
  • PQRI – Physician Quality Reporting Initiative
  • RHIO – Regional Health Information Organizations
  • SaaS – Software-as-a-Service product
  • SDO – Standards Development Organization

Who’s That?

  • AAAAI – American Academy of Allergy ASthma & Immunology
  • ACC – American College of Cardiology
  • ACRO – Association of Clinical Research Organizations
  • AHA - American Hospital Association
  • AHDI - Association for Healthcare Documentation Integrity
  • AHIC – American Health Information Community (Now NeHC)
  • AHIMA – The American Health Information Management Association
  • AHRQ – Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
  • AMDIS - Association of Medical Directors of Information Systems
  • AMIA – American Medical Informatics Association
  • ANI – Alliance for Nursing Informatics
  • ANSI – American National Standards Institute
  • ASHHRA - American Society for Healthcare Human Resources Administration
  • CCHIT – Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology
  • CDC - Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
  • CHIME - College of Healthcare Information Management Executives
  • CMS – Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services
  • EHRVA – Electronic Health Record Vendors Association
  • FDA - Food and Drug Administration
  • HBMA – Healthcare Billing and Management Association
  • HIMSS - Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society
  • HISPC - Health Information Security and Privacy Collaboration
  • HITRC - National Health IT Reasearch Center
  • HITSP – Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel
  • HHS – Department of Health and Human Services (link to recovery site)
  • HRSA - Health Resources and Services Administration (under HHS)
  • IHI - Institute for Healthcare Improvement
  • IHTSDO – International Health Terminology Standards Development Organisation
  • IPA – Independent Practice Association
  • JCAHO - The Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations
  • MGMA - Medical Group Management Association
  • MSO – Medical Service Organization
  • MTIA - Medical Transcription Industry Association
  • MTSO – Medical Transcription Service Organization
  • NAHAM – National Association of Healthcare Access Management
  • NAHIT – National Alliance for Health Information Technology (Ceasing operation on 9/30/09)
  • NASCIO – National Association of State Chief Information Officers
  • NCVHS - National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics
  • NeHC – National eHealth Collaborative
  • NIST - National Institute of Standards and Technology
  • OCR – Office of Civil Rights (Dept of Health and Human Services)
  • PHO – Physician Hospital Organization
  • SHIRE – Summit Health Institute for Research and Education, Inc.
  • TCBI – The Center for Business Innovation
  • TIPAAA - The IPA Association of America
  • WEDI - Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange

On the lighter side…