Glossary

Medical and Coding Terms and Definitions

Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was enacted by the U.S. Congress in 1996. According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) website, Title I of HIPAA protects health insurance coverage for workers and their families when they change or lose their jobs. Title II of HIPAA, known as the Administrative [...]

Medical Abbreviations and prefix/suffix medical terms

List of commonly used medical and financial acronyms and abbreviations.

International Classification of Diseases

The International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (most commonly known by the abbreviation ICD) provides codes to classify diseases and a wide variety of signs, symptoms, abnormal findings, complaints, social circumstances and external causes of injury or disease. Every health condition can be assigned to a unique category and given a code, up to six characters long. Such categories can include a set of similar diseases.

HL7 Standards

Hospitals and other healthcare provider organizations typically have many different computer systems used for everything from billing records to patient tracking. All of these systems should communicate with each other (or “interface”) when they receive new information but not all do so.

Practice Management Software

Practice management software (PMS) is a category of software that deals with the day-to-day operations of a medical practice.

Electronic Medical Record

An electronic medical record (EMR) is a medical record in digital format.

In health informatics an EMR is considered by some to be one of several types of EHRs (electronic health records), but in general usage EMR and EHR are synonymous.