Glossary
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- Health
- A complete state of physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.
- Health and Retirement Study
- The University of Michigan biennial survey of more than 22,000 Americans over the age of 50. Supported by the National Institute on Aging, the study analyzes physical and mental health, insurance coverage, financial status, family support systems, labor market status, and retirement planning.
- Health behavior
- Actions that prevent illness or promote health.
- Health care delivery system
- A term used to denote the facilities, providers and services through which health care is provided in a geographic area or to a group of individuals, as well as the financing for health care delivery, whether or not the individual facilities and providers are to any degree coordinated or working in concert.
- Health Employer Data and Information Set
- The result of a coordinated development effort by the National Committee for Quality Assurance, HEDIS is a tool used by more than 90 percent of America's health plans to measure performance on important dimensions of care and service. HEDIS consists of 71 measures across 8 domains of care. Many health plans report HEDIS data to employers and other payers.
- Health insurance
- A form of protection against the financial risk that accrues from health care spending, under which the insurer reimburses patients for approved medical care.
- Health Insurance Plan of California (renamed the Pacific Health Advantage)
- A small-employer purchasing cooperative, initially financed through loans from the state.
- Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996
- The Health Isurance Portability and Accountability Act, Pub. Law No. 104-191 (1996) was enacted by Congress to improve the portability and continuity of health insurance coverage in the group and individual markets; to combat waste, fraud, and abuse in health insurance and health care delivery; to promote the use of medical savings accounts (MSA); to improve access to long-term care services and coverage; to simplify the administration of health insurance; and for other purposes.
- Health Insurance Purchasing Cooperative
- Pooled insurance-purchasing arrangements, established either by private organizations or through state legislation, that typically limit membership to employers with 2 to 50 workers. A cooperative formed of small businesses or uninsured individuals for the purpose of purchasing health insurance.
- Health Maintenance Organization
- A comprehensive prepaid system of health care intended to emphasize the prevention and early detection of disease, and the continuity of care; often used synonymously with "managed care plan."
- Health Professional Shortage Area
- Any area, either rural or urban, recognized by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) as having too few health professionals. Section 413(a) of the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003 provides for a ten percent incentive payment to physicians who deliver services in HPSAs. In expanding this benefit, Congress attempted to assure the continued availability of health care professionals in underserved communities.
- Health Reimbursement Account
- Tax-preferred savings accounts that are typically coupled with high-deductible health plans (HDHP); HRAs allow employers to directly reimburse employees for pre-specified medical costs that are not covered under insurance.
- Health Savings Account
- A form of tax-advantaged savings account, typically coupled with a high-deductible health plan (HDHP), that allows an employee to set-aside a portion of their earnings to pay for medical expenses. The HSA is owned and controlled by the individual.
- Health-Related Quality of Life
- The impact of the health aspects of an individual's life on that person's evaluation of their well-being. Also used to refer to the value of a health state to an individual.
- Healthcare Common Procedure Coding System
- A health care coding system based on the American Medical Association's Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) which is used by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and other insurers for claims processing. Use of HCPCS for healthcare transactions was made mandatory by HIPAA.
- Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel
- A group coordinated by the American National Standards Institute that serves as a cooperative partnership between the public and private sectors. Its stated purpose is achieving a widely accepted and useful set of standards specifically to enable and support widespread interoperability among health care software applications.
- HealthMart
- A non-profit group insurance purchasing arrangement that would be operated jointly by employers, providers, insurers, and employees. Such an arrangement would be exempt from state-mandated benefits and could operate across state boundaries. HealthMarts were proposed in H.R. 5923 (the Patients' Health Care Reform Act), a bill introduced in the House of Representatives in April 2008.
- Healthy Life Expectancy at birth
- In contrast to total life expectancy, the average number of years that a person can expect to live in "full health" by taking into account years lived in less than full health due to disease and/or injury. Used by the World Health Organization (WHO) to report average levels of population health across countries annually.
- Help Efficient, Accessible, Low-Cost, Timely Healthcare (HEALTH) Act
- A bill introduced in the House of Representative (H.R. 5) that attempted to incorporate several medical malpractice policy options (including a $250,000 cap on both non-economic damages and punitive damages, as well as a sliding scale limiting attorney contingency fees) and apply them uniformly across the country.
- Hemoglobin A1c
- Glycosylated hemoglobin; a test for measuring blood glucose control, used regularly in patients with diabetes.
- HIE
- see RAND Health Insurance Experiment
- Hierarchical Condition Categories
- A diagnosis-grouping method for risk adjustment used by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to determine payment in Medicare Advantage plans.
- High-Deductible Health Plan
- A fee-for-service insurance plan with a deductible that is larger than the deductible for more standard indemnity plans (usually $1,100 per year or more for single coverage; $2,200 or more for families). Many such plans are accompanied by a savings option that allows people to set aside pretax dollars to be used to meet out-of-pocket health care expenses up to their deductible. (See also HSA, HRA).
- High-Density Liproprotein Cholesterol
- A lipoprotein of blood plasma that is composed of a high proportion of protein with little triglyceride and cholesterol and that is associated with decreased probability of developing atherosclerosis. Known as the "good" cholesterol, it helps return excess cholesterol to the liver for excretion.
- High-risk group
- Categorization of a subpopulation for special consideration in recommendations for screening, diagnosis, therapy, and management of a disease.
- HIPAA Privacy Rule(s)
- The Standards for Privacy of Individually Identifiable Health Information (Privacy Rule) establishes, for the first time, a set of national standards for the protection of certain health information. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued the Privacy Rule to implement the requirements of HIPAA. The Rule was intended to increase the confidentiality and protection of patient information during electronic transmission or communication among providers or between providers and payers or other covered entities.
- HIT
- A term that refers to a variety of electronic tools for use in the management of health information. Applications of health IT include the electronic medical record (EMR), the electronic health record (EHR), the personal health record (PHR), computerized physician order entry (CPOE), and clinical decision support (CDS). In addition, health information exchanges (HIEs) are being developed to support sharing of information electronically among health care providers.
- Home and Community-based Services (HCBS) Waiver
- see Section 1915(c) waiver
- Home health care
- Any care or services provided in a patient's place of residence, such as home health, home medical equipment services, and infusion therapy services.
- Home Health Resource Group
- A method for adjusting case mix used by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to determine payment for home health care. (See also case mix).
- Hospital Compare
- Part of the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) quality-improvement efforts, a consumer-oriented Web site with information that can be used to evaluate the quality of hospital care for a selected number of common medical conditions.
- Hospital Quality Alliance
- A national public-private collaboration, the Hospital Quality Alliance (HQA) makes information about hospital performance accessible to the public and informs and encourages efforts to improve quality. HQA includes organizations representing America's hospitals, consumer representatives, physician and nursing organizations, employers and payers, oversight organizations, and government agencies.
- Hospitalist
- A physician who specializes in seeing and treating other physicians' hospitalized patients in order to minimize the number of hospital visits by the patients' regular physician(s).