Health Care

• American Hospital Association (AHA) is the national organization that represents and serves all types of hospitals, health care networks and their patients and communities.

• American Society of Healthcare Engineers (ASHE) is comprised of dedicated health care professionals who form a community of essential partners collaborating with physicians and clinicians in creating an environment for healing.

• Community hospitals are defined as all nonfederal, short-term general and other special hospitals. Other special hospitals include obstetrics and gynecology; eye, ear, nose and throat; rehabilitation; orthopedic; and other individually described specialty services. Community hospitals include academic medical centers or other teaching hospitals if they are non-federal short-term hospitals. Excluded are hospitals not accessible by the general public, such as prison hospitals or college infirmaries.

• Computerized provider order entry (CPOE) is a process of electronic entry of physician instructions for the treatment of patients (particularly hospitalized patients) under his or her care. These orders are communicated over a computer network to the medical staff (nurses, therapists, pharmacists or other physicians) or to the departments (pharmacy, laboratory or radiology) responsible for fulfilling the order.

• Continuum of care in medicine, describes the delivery of health care over a period of time. In patients with a disease, this covers all phases of illness from diagnosis to the end of life.

• Electronic health record (EHR) refers to an individual patient's medical record in digital format.

• Electronic medication administration records (EMAR) is a process of electronic entry and administration of patient medication information by health care professional.

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

• Emergency power supply system (EPSS) covered in this system include power sources, transfer equipment, controls, supervisory equipment and all related electrical and mechanical auxiliary and accessory equipment needed to supply electrical power to the load terminals of the transfer equipment.

• Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPAct created the energy efficient commercial buildings deduction, which allows building owners to deduct the entire cost of a lighting or building upgrade in the year the equipment is placed in service, subject to a cap.

• Green Guide for Health Care (GGHC) is the health care sector's first quantifiable sustainable design toolkit integrating enhanced environmental and health principles and practices into the planning, design, construction, operations and maintenance of their facilities. This guide provides the health care sector with a voluntary, self-certifying metric toolkit of best practices that designers, owners and operators can use to guide and evaluate their progress towards high performance healing environments. GGHC is like the LEED for health care organizations. The GGHC borrows the credit numbering scheme and credit outline structure of the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) LEED® family of products, by agreement, with some modifications.

• Group purchasing organization (GPO) are purchasing groups that allow their hospital members to pool their purchases of medical supplies, office equipment and maintenance supplies to get volume discounts.

• Health information technology (HIT) provides the umbrella framework to describe the comprehensive management of health information and its secure exchange between consumers, providers, government and quality entities and insurers.

• Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) has two sections: Title I and Title II. 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 Simplification (AS) provisions, requires the establishment of national standards for electronic health care transactions and national identifiers for providers, health insurance plans and employers.

• Hospital System is defined by the AHA as either a multi-hospital or a diversified single hospital system. A multi-hospital system is two or more hospitals owned, leased, sponsored, or contract managed by a central organization. Single, freestanding hospitals may be categorized as a system by bringing into membership three or more and at least 25 percent, of their owned or leased non-hospital pre-acute or post-acute health care organizations. System affiliation does not preclude network participation.

• Integrated delivery network (IDN) is a group of hospitals, physicians, other providers, insurers and/or community agencies that work together to coordinate and deliver a broad spectrum of services to their community. Network participation does not preclude system affiliation.

• The International Association for Healthcare Security and Safety (IAHSS) is the only organization solely dedicated to professionals involved in managing and directing security and safety programs in health care institutions.

• Isolated power systems (IPS) are provided as a means for life safety in power distribution by providing an ungrounded secondary in wet locations.

• The Joint Commission, formerly the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO), is a private sector United States-based non-profit organization. It is the best known of a large number of active health care accreditation groups in the USA. In the USA, hospitals and other types of health care organizations are highly motivated to do well during Joint Commission surveys, as accredited organizations are deemed by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to meet the Medicare and Medicaid certification requirements – necessary for gaining reimbursement from Medicare and managed care organizations.

• LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design): is a third-party certification program through the US Green Building Council and is the nationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction and operation of high performance green buildings. LEED promotes a whole-building approach to sustainability by recognizing performance in five key areas of human and environmental health: sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection and indoor environmental quality.

• National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) was created to help prevent child abduction and sexual exploitation; help find missing children; and assist victims of child abduction and sexual exploitation.

• National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) is a U.S. organization (albeit with some international members) charged with creating and maintaining minimum standards and requirements for fire prevention and suppression activities, training and equipment, as well as other life-safety codes and standards. This includes everything from building codes to the personal protective equipment utilized by firefighters while extinguishing a blaze.

• NEC 517 is the standard that governs the installation of electrical equipment in health care facilities.

• NFPA 70B is a section of the NFPA that is now referenced within NFPA 70E and provides guidelines to facilities related to the maintenance, testing and frequency of the electrical distribution system.

• NFPA 70E is a section of the NFPA that refers specifically to electrical safety requirements for safeguarding employees, i.e., arc flash safety.

• NFPA 99 is a section of the NFPA that refers to criteria to minimize the hazards of fire, explosion and electricity in health care facilities.

• NFPA 110 is a section of the NFPA that refers to performance requirements for backup power systems as an emergency source of power.

• Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is an agency of the United States Department of Labor. It was created by Congress under the Occupational Safety and Health Act, signed by President Richard M. Nixon, on December 29, 1970. OSHA's mission is to prevent work-related injuries, illnesses and deaths. Since the agency was created in 1971, occupational deaths have been cut by 62% and injuries have declined by 42%.

• Office of National Coordinator (ONC) provides counsel to the Secretary of HHS and departmental leadership for the development and nationwide implementation of an interoperable health information technology infrastructure. Use of this infrastructure will improve the quality, safety and efficiency of health care and the ability of consumers to manage their health information and health care.

• Personal protective equipment (PPE) refers to protective clothing, helmets, goggles or other garment designed to protect the wearer's body or clothing from injury by electrical hazards, heat, chemicals and infection, for job-related occupational safety and health purposes and in sports, martial arts, combat, etc.

• Picture archiving and communication systems (PACS) are computers or networks dedicated to the storage, retrieval, distribution and presentation of images. The medical images are stored in an independent format. The most common format for image storage is DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine).

• Radiology information system (RIS) is a computerized database used by radiology departments to store, manipulate and distribute patient radiological data and imagery. The system generally consists of patient tracking and scheduling, result reporting and image tracking capabilities.

• Registered hospitals are those hospitals that meet AHA's criteria for registration as a hospital facility. Registered hospitals include AHA member hospitals as well as nonmember hospitals. For a complete listing of the criteria used for registration, please see registration requirements for hospitals at www.aha.org/aha/content/2006/pdf/ AHAGuide2007Definitions.pdf.

• Return on investment (ROI) is a performance measure used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment or to compare the efficiency of a number of different investments. To calculate ROI, the benefit (return) of an investment is divided by the cost of the investment; the result is expressed as a percentage or a ratio.

• Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is a general term for a family of transmission technologies for delivery of voice communications over IP networks such as the Internet or other packetswitched networks.