Buzzwords / Acronyms

• AHRQ - Agency for Healthcare Reasearch and Quality
• ANSI: American National Standard Institute – A standard for formatting claims, ERN, and other EDI transactions
• ARRA- American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009
• ASP- Application Service Providers (a type of EHR platform)
• CCD: Continuity of Care Document – Part of the HL7 protocol, CCD is an XML document describing the architecture of a medical document and in-turn, patient records
• CCHIT- Certified Commission for Health Information Technology
• CCN - CMS Certification Numbers
• CDSS- Clinical Decision Support System
• CER - Comparative Effectiveness Research
• CHITREC – Chicago Health Information Technology Regional Extension Center
• CMS - Centers for Medicare/Medicaid Services
• CPOE -Computerized Prescription Order Entry
• EHR vs. EMR - Electronic Health Record (patient owned data, over time/across providers) vs. Electronic Medical Record (provider owned data within application environment)
• EP- Eligible Professional
• FLOSS - Free/Libre Open Source Software
• FQHC - Federally Qualified Health Center
• HIE- Health Information Exchange
• HIT- Health Information Technology
• HITECH Act - Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act
• HITSP - Health Information Technology Standards Panel
• HIPAA - Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act
• HHS - Health and Human Services (Government Dept)
• HL7: Health Link 7 – A protocol for interoperability
• HPSA- Health Professional Shortage Area
• ICD9/10/11 - International Classification of Diseases (coding system)
• IFR- Interim Final Rule
• IL-HITREC – Illinois Health Information Technology Regional Extension Center administered by Northern Illinois University supporting all regions in Illinois outside the 606xx area codes
• LAN- Local Area Network
• LOINC: Logical Observation Identifiers Names and Codes – A data-set of universal codes for exchanging and storing clinical results, vital signs, and more
• Meaningful Use (MU)- 25 objectives established under ARRA that providers must obtain in order to receive CMS incentives
• MMI Program – Master of Science in Medical Informatics program offered by Northwestern University’s School of Continuing Studies
• MUA- Medically Underserved Area
• NPRM- Notice of Proposed Rulemaking
• NCPDP: National Council for Prescription Drug Programs – A communication standard for e-Prescribing
• ONC (aka ONCHIT)- Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology
• PCP - Primary Care Provider/Physician
• PHR- Personal Health Record
• PMS - Practice Management System
• RHIO- Regional Health Information Organization
• SaaS- Software as a Service (a type of EHR platform)
• SNOMED - Systemized Nomenclature of Medicine, a hierarchical classification system of clinical terminology
• TIN- Tax Identification Number
• VPN - Virtual Private Network
• WAN - Wide Area Network