Glossary of terms

See the following list of definitions for some of the terms you find throughout this content. The first instance of any glossary term on a page appears as a link; hovering over the test pops up a box with the definition of the term.

  • AHRQ
    Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality; a branch of the US Department of Health and Human Services and the creator of specifications for PSIs, PDIs, PQIs and IQIs
  • All-Payer
    includes all encounters, regardless of payer
  • APR-DRG
    All-Patient Refined Diagnosis-Related Group
  • CC
    An indicator of severity for MS-DRGs; there are additional Complications or Commorbidities for the encounter
  • CMS
    Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Service
  • DRG
    Diagnosis-Related Group
  • Dynamic profile
    a profile that changes what data is pulled based on the user
  • Encounter
    patient record of treatment in a facility from admit to discharge
  • HCUP
    Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project; the Nation's most comprehensive source of hospital data, including information on inpatient, ambulatory, and ED care
  • Internal Profile
    a subset of data specific to your facility or health system
  • LOS
    Length of Stay
  • MCC
    An indicator of severity for MS-DRGs; there are additional Major Complications or Commorbidities for the encounter
  • MS-DRG
    Medicare Severity Diagnosis-Related Group
  • NRD
    Nationwide Readmissions Database; one of the AHRQ HCUP databases; used to provide benchmarks for readmissions measures
  • Peak
    proprietary software from Syntellis for analyzing healthcare data; now called Axiom Clinical Analytics
  • Peer Group
    an external profile for comparing your data to other facilities
  • POA
    A diagnosis code flag indicating if that condition was Present on Admission or not. Values include: Y (yes), N (no), U (insufficient evidence), W (provider unable to clinically determine), 1 (unreported/not used)
  • polarity
    The favorable direction of the measure; whether higher or lower measure values are preferred
  • PPC
    Potentially Preventable Complications
  • PPE
    Physician Practice Evaluation
  • PPR
    Potentially Preventable Readmissions
  • Profile
    the user-specified set of criteria to filter an overall dataset on for creating subsets of data
  • PSI
    Patient Safety Indicators
  • ROM
    Risk of Mortality (1-4)
  • SOI
    Severity of Illness (1-4)
  • TBS
    formerly Total Benchmark Solution, then Syntellis/Peak Software; now Syntellis Axiom Clinical Analytics