Saturday, May 21, 2011

Health Care Business Terms for Dummies (Like Medical Students)

Since starting this blog I have had the opportunity to stumble across interesting business terms currently in use in health care. As a service to our graduating medical students and residents entering our evolving world of medicine, I thought I'd assemble a reference source of important business terms for their use. This list is by no means complete and I would welcome other definitions readers might add to this ever-expanding list:

TermTranslation
Accountable CareCare provided by those who only know how to subtract
Health care consumerPatients - If your patients are alive, they cost the system money
KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders)"Yes" Men and Women for Industry - I was first going to call these individuals "industry whores" but not all of them accept fees from industry for their opinions. The opinions of KOLs, however, uniformly jive with the industry interests they speak about.
Lean Six SigmaReducing staff-to-patient ratios as low as possible - and substituting kiosks for them instead.
Quality MeasureAn order you seem to have forgotten that makes people money.
Meaningful UseA measure of one's ability to use a keyboard - To suggest another definition is silly since no one will be paid to deliver care in the future unless they have purchased a very expensive computer system tells you what to type and when to type it.
Wellness InitiativeHealth Data Collection Opportunity - Remember, "wellness" is not the opposite of illness.

Hope this helps!

-Wes

3 comments:

keith said...

Excellent post!

Lisa said...

Umm humm...I must say that I am liking the lean six sigma. It is much easier to go to a kiosk and input information than to be called to the desk multiple times. I'm liking it and glad to have it around even if it doesn't shorten wait times.

Tim said...

There aren't any kiosks in the operating room (yet), but there is a computer! The most important skill for the computer nurse (she used to be called a circulating nurse) is her keyboard skill. Can she type in the mountain of useless information (that no one but the jacko..., I mean JCAHO reviewer will ever read) before the operation is finished. Computer duties have superseded patient care. The nurses know it and the hospitals know it! JACHO and the government have mandated more work than there are hours in the day to finish. In the OR, nurses can't even find the time to make sure that everything needed for an operation is available, an integral part of the "Time Out." Nurses would rather be performing patient care, but they have no choice! This will only get worse with Obaminationcare. "Coverage" will be a blank that can be checked on every citizens computer record, but there won't be any blank to check for "quality patient care."