Insurance, Health
Insurance Coverage
Insurance
Insurance, Long-Term Care
Health insurance to provide full or partial coverage for long-term home care services or for long-term nursing care provided in a residential facility such as a nursing home.
Insurance, Life
Health Status
The level of health of the individual, group, or population as subjectively assessed by the individual or by more objective measures.
Insurance Carriers
Health Care Reform
Innovation and improvement of the health care system by reappraisal, amendment of services, and removal of faults and abuses in providing and distributing health services to patients. It includes a re-alignment of health services and health insurance to maximum demographic elements (the unemployed, indigent, uninsured, elderly, inner cities, rural areas) with reference to coverage, hospitalization, pricing and cost containment, insurers' and employers' costs, pre-existing medical conditions, prescribed drugs, equipment, and services.
Medically Uninsured
Individuals or groups with no or inadequate health insurance coverage. Those falling into this category usually comprise three primary groups: the medically indigent (MEDICAL INDIGENCY); those whose clinical condition makes them medically uninsurable; and the working uninsured.
Public Health
Branch of medicine concerned with the prevention and control of disease and disability, and the promotion of physical and mental health of the population on the international, national, state, or municipal level.
Insurance Pools
Delivery of Health Care
The concept concerned with all aspects of providing and distributing health services to a patient population.
Health Services Accessibility
The degree to which individuals are inhibited or facilitated in their ability to gain entry to and to receive care and services from the health care system. Factors influencing this ability include geographic, architectural, transportational, and financial considerations, among others.
Health Policy
Decisions, usually developed by government policymakers, for determining present and future objectives pertaining to the health care system.
Insurance Selection Bias
Health Benefit Plans, Employee
Health insurance plans for employees, and generally including their dependents, usually on a cost-sharing basis with the employer paying a percentage of the premium.
Health Expenditures
The amounts spent by individuals, groups, nations, or private or public organizations for total health care and/or its various components. These amounts may or may not be equivalent to the actual costs (HEALTH CARE COSTS) and may or may not be shared among the patient, insurers, and/or employers.
National Health Programs
Health Care Surveys
Statistical measures of utilization and other aspects of the provision of health care services including hospitalization and ambulatory care.
Health Surveys
A systematic collection of factual data pertaining to health and disease in a human population within a given geographic area.
Insurance Benefits
Payments or services provided under stated circumstances under the terms of an insurance policy. In prepayment programs, benefits are the services the programs will provide at defined locations and to the extent needed.
Insurance, Health, Reimbursement
Payment by a third-party payer in a sum equal to the amount expended by a health care provider or facility for health services rendered to an insured or program beneficiary. (From Facts on File Dictionary of Health Care Management, 1988)
Health Promotion
Health Services
Services for the diagnosis and treatment of disease and the maintenance of health.
Health Services Needs and Demand
Health services required by a population or community as well as the health services that the population or community is able and willing to pay for.
Universal Coverage
Health insurance coverage for all persons in a state or country, rather than for some subset of the population. It may extend to the unemployed as well as to the employed; to aliens as well as to citizens; for pre-existing conditions as well as for current illnesses; for mental as well as for physical conditions.
Quality of Health Care
Attitude to Health
Public attitudes toward health, disease, and the medical care system.
Primary Health Care
Health Services Research
The integration of epidemiologic, sociological, economic, and other analytic sciences in the study of health services. Health services research is usually concerned with relationships between need, demand, supply, use, and outcome of health services. The aim of the research is evaluation, particularly in terms of structure, process, output, and outcome. (From Last, Dictionary of Epidemiology, 2d ed)
Insurance, Liability
State Health Plans
State plans prepared by the State Health Planning and Development Agencies which are made up from plans submitted by the Health Systems Agencies and subject to review and revision by the Statewide Health Coordinating Council.
Health Planning
Planning for needed health and/or welfare services and facilities.
Child Health Services
Organized services to provide health care for children.
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act
Public Law 104-91 enacted in 1996, was designed to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the healthcare system, protect health insurance coverage for workers and their families, and to protect individual personal health information.
Insurance, Major Medical
Insurance, Accident
Health Behavior
Behaviors expressed by individuals to protect, maintain or promote their health status. For example, proper diet, and appropriate exercise are activities perceived to influence health status. Life style is closely associated with health behavior and factors influencing life style are socioeconomic, educational, and cultural.
Medicaid
Federal program, created by Public Law 89-97, Title XIX, a 1965 amendment to the Social Security Act, administered by the states, that provides health care benefits to indigent and medically indigent persons.
Health Care Sector
Economic sector concerned with the provision, distribution, and consumption of health care services and related products.
Private Sector
Insurance, Hospitalization
Health insurance providing benefits to cover or partly cover hospital expenses.
Socioeconomic Factors
Health Personnel
Men and women working in the provision of health services, whether as individual practitioners or employees of health institutions and programs, whether or not professionally trained, and whether or not subject to public regulation. (From A Discursive Dictionary of Health Care, 1976)
Patient Acceptance of Health Care
The seeking and acceptance by patients of health service.
World Health
The concept pertaining to the health status of inhabitants of the world.
Oral Health
Health Education
Education that increases the awareness and favorably influences the attitudes and knowledge relating to the improvement of health on a personal or community basis.
Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice
Knowledge, attitudes, and associated behaviors which pertain to health-related topics such as PATHOLOGIC PROCESSES or diseases, their prevention, and treatment. This term refers to non-health workers and health workers (HEALTH PERSONNEL).
Insurance Claim Review
Review of claims by insurance companies to determine liability and amount of payment for various services. The review may also include determination of eligibility of the claimant or beneficiary or of the provider of the benefit; determination that the benefit is covered or not payable under another policy; or determination that the service was necessary and of reasonable cost and quality.
Health Status Disparities
Eligibility Determination
Public Health Administration
Management of public health organizations or agencies.
Financing, Personal
Payment by individuals or their family for health care services which are not covered by a third-party payer, either insurance or medical assistance.
Fees and Charges
Amounts charged to the patient as payer for health care services.
Occupational Health
The promotion and maintenance of physical and mental health in the work environment.
Health Care Rationing
Planning for the equitable allocation, apportionment, or distribution of available health resources.
Mental Health Services
Organized services to provide mental health care.
Community Health Services
Environmental Health
The science of controlling or modifying those conditions, influences, or forces surrounding man which relate to promoting, establishing, and maintaining health.
Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act
An Act prohibiting a health plan from establishing lifetime limits or annual limits on the dollar value of benefits for any participant or beneficiary after January 1, 2014. It permits a restricted annual limit for plan years beginning prior to January 1, 2014. It provides that a health plan shall not be prevented from placing annual or lifetime per-beneficiary limits on covered benefits. The Act sets up a competitive health insurance market.
Poverty
A situation in which the level of living of an individual, family, or group is below the standard of the community. It is often related to a specific income level.
Delivery of Health Care, Integrated
A health care system which combines physicians, hospitals, and other medical services with a health plan to provide the complete spectrum of medical care for its customers. In a fully integrated system, the three key elements - physicians, hospital, and health plan membership - are in balance in terms of matching medical resources with the needs of purchasers and patients. (Coddington et al., Integrated Health Care: Reorganizing the Physician, Hospital and Health Plan Relationship, 1994, p7)
Health Priorities
Preferentially rated health-related activities or functions to be used in establishing health planning goals. This may refer specifically to PL93-641.
Public Health Practice
The activities and endeavors of the public health services in a community on any level.
Cost Sharing
Provisions of an insurance policy that require the insured to pay some portion of covered expenses. Several forms of sharing are in use, e.g., deductibles, coinsurance, and copayments. Cost sharing does not refer to or include amounts paid in premiums for the coverage. (From Dictionary of Health Services Management, 2d ed)
Rural Health
The status of health in rural populations.
Cross-Sectional Studies
Studies in which the presence or absence of disease or other health-related variables are determined in each member of the study population or in a representative sample at one particular time. This contrasts with LONGITUDINAL STUDIES which are followed over a period of time.
Outcome Assessment (Health Care)
Attitude of Health Personnel
Urban Health
The status of health in urban populations.
Insurance, Physician Services
Health Literacy
Rural Health Services
Health services, public or private, in rural areas. The services include the promotion of health and the delivery of health care.
Preventive Health Services
Services designed for HEALTH PROMOTION and prevention of disease.
Health Insurance Exchanges
State-provided health insurance marketplaces established under the PATIENT PROTECTION AND AFFORDABLE CARE ACT.
Social Security
Government sponsored social insurance programs.
Community Health Planning
Planning that has the goals of improving health, improving accessibility to health services, and promoting efficiency in the provision of services and resources on a comprehensive basis for a whole community. (From Facts on File Dictionary of Health Care Management, 1988, p299)
Health Maintenance Organizations
Organized systems for providing comprehensive prepaid health care that have five basic attributes: (1) provide care in a defined geographic area; (2) provide or ensure delivery of an agreed-upon set of basic and supplemental health maintenance and treatment services; (3) provide care to a voluntarily enrolled group of persons; (4) require their enrollees to use the services of designated providers; and (5) receive reimbursement through a predetermined, fixed, periodic prepayment made by the enrollee without regard to the degree of services provided. (From Facts on File Dictionary of Health Care Management, 1988)
Community Health Centers
Facilities which administer the delivery of health care services to people living in a community or neighborhood.
State Government
World Health Organization
Logistic Models
Statistical models which describe the relationship between a qualitative dependent variable (that is, one which can take only certain discrete values, such as the presence or absence of a disease) and an independent variable. A common application is in epidemiology for estimating an individual's risk (probability of a disease) as a function of a given risk factor.
Insurance, Disability
Insurance designed to compensate persons who lose wages because of illness or injury; insurance providing periodic payments that partially replace lost wages, salary, or other income when the insured is unable to work because of illness, injury, or disease. Individual and group disability insurance are two types of such coverage. (From Facts on File Dictionary of Health Care Management, 1988, p207)
Health Manpower
The availability of HEALTH PERSONNEL. It includes the demand and recruitment of both professional and allied health personnel, their present and future supply and distribution, and their assignment and utilization.
Health Resources
Available manpower, facilities, revenue, equipment, and supplies to produce requisite health care and services.
Quality Assurance, Health Care
Activities and programs intended to assure or improve the quality of care in either a defined medical setting or a program. The concept includes the assessment or evaluation of the quality of care; identification of problems or shortcomings in the delivery of care; designing activities to overcome these deficiencies; and follow-up monitoring to ensure effectiveness of corrective steps.
Insurance, Pharmaceutical Services
Managed Care Programs
Health insurance plans intended to reduce unnecessary health care costs through a variety of mechanisms, including: economic incentives for physicians and patients to select less costly forms of care; programs for reviewing the medical necessity of specific services; increased beneficiary cost sharing; controls on inpatient admissions and lengths of stay; the establishment of cost-sharing incentives for outpatient surgery; selective contracting with health care providers; and the intensive management of high-cost health care cases. The programs may be provided in a variety of settings, such as HEALTH MAINTENANCE ORGANIZATIONS and PREFERRED PROVIDER ORGANIZATIONS.
Cost Control
The containment, regulation, or restraint of costs. Costs are said to be contained when the value of resources committed to an activity is not considered excessive. This determination is frequently subjective and dependent upon the specific geographic area of the activity being measured. (From Dictionary of Health Services Management, 2d ed)
Policy Making
Federal Government
Models, Econometric
Employer Health Costs
That portion of total HEALTH CARE COSTS borne by an individual's or group's employing organization.
Regional Health Planning
Planning for health resources at a regional or multi-state level.
Interviews as Topic
Social Justice
Health Services Administration
Medicare
Federal program, created by Public Law 89-97, Title XVIII-Health Insurance for the Aged, a 1965 amendment to the Social Security Act, that provides health insurance benefits to persons over the age of 65 and others eligible for Social Security benefits. It consists of two separate but coordinated programs: hospital insurance (MEDICARE PART A) and supplementary medical insurance (MEDICARE PART B). (Hospital Administration Terminology, AHA, 2d ed and A Discursive Dictionary of Health Care, US House of Representatives, 1976)
Tax Exemption
Status not subject to taxation; as the income of a philanthropic organization. Tax-exempt organizations may also qualify to receive tax-deductible donations if they are considered to be nonprofit corporations under Section 501(c)3 of the United States Internal Revenue Code.
Aid to Families with Dependent Children
Financial assistance provided by the government to indigent families with dependent children who meet certain requirements as defined by the Social Security Act, Title IV, in the U.S.
Electronic Health Records
Media that facilitate transportability of pertinent information concerning patient's illness across varied providers and geographic locations. Some versions include direct linkages to online consumer health information that is relevant to the health conditions and treatments related to a specific patient.
Maternal Health Services
Organized services to provide health care to expectant and nursing mothers.
Economic Competition
Questionnaires
Health Occupations
Professions or other business activities directed to the cure and prevention of disease. For occupations of medical personnel who are not physicians but who are working in the fields of medical technology, physical therapy, etc., ALLIED HEALTH OCCUPATIONS is available.
Ethnic Groups
Age Factors
Age as a constituent element or influence contributing to the production of a result. It may be applicable to the cause or the effect of a circumstance. It is used with human or animal concepts but should be differentiated from AGING, a physiological process, and TIME FACTORS which refers only to the passage of time.
Health Services for the Aged
Services for the diagnosis and treatment of diseases in the aged and the maintenance of health in the elderly.
Privatization
Process of shifting publicly controlled services and/or facilities to the private sector.
Costs and Cost Analysis
Marketing of Health Services
Application of marketing principles and techniques to maximize the use of health care resources.
Prevalence
Occupational Health Services
Health Plan Implementation
Those actions designed to carry out recommendations pertaining to health plans or programs.
Urban Health Services
Health services, public or private, in urban areas. The services include the promotion of health and the delivery of health care.
Comprehensive Health Care
Providing for the full range of personal health services for diagnosis, treatment, follow-up and rehabilitation of patients.
Social Class
A stratum of people with similar position and prestige; includes social stratification. Social class is measured by criteria such as education, occupation, and income.
Social Welfare
Health Care Coalitions
Voluntary groups of people representing diverse interests in the community such as hospitals, businesses, physicians, and insurers, with the principal objective to improve health care cost effectiveness.
Public Health Nursing
A nursing specialty concerned with promoting and protecting the health of populations, using knowledge from nursing, social, and public health sciences to develop local, regional, state, and national health policy and research. It is population-focused and community-oriented, aimed at health promotion and disease prevention through educational, diagnostic, and preventive programs.
Women's Health Services
Income Tax
Tax on the net income of an individual, organization, or business.
Needs Assessment
Dental Health Services
Services designed to promote, maintain, or restore dental health.
Medical Indigency
Program Evaluation
Quality Indicators, Health Care
Norms, criteria, standards, and other direct qualitative and quantitative measures used in determining the quality of health care.
Managed Competition
A strategy for purchasing health care in a manner which will obtain maximum value for the price for the purchasers of the health care and the recipients. The concept was developed primarily by Alain Enthoven of Stanford University and promulgated by the Jackson Hole Group. The strategy depends on sponsors for groups of the population to be insured. The sponsor, in some cases a health alliance, acts as an intermediary between the group and competing provider groups (accountable health plans). The competition is price-based among annual premiums for a defined, standardized benefit package. (From Slee and Slee, Health Care Reform Terms, 1993)
Cohort Studies
Studies in which subsets of a defined population are identified. These groups may or may not be exposed to factors hypothesized to influence the probability of the occurrence of a particular disease or other outcome. Cohorts are defined populations which, as a whole, are followed in an attempt to determine distinguishing subgroup characteristics.
Population Surveillance
Health Care Costs
The actual costs of providing services related to the delivery of health care, including the costs of procedures, therapies, and medications. It is differentiated from HEALTH EXPENDITURES, which refers to the amount of money paid for the services, and from fees, which refers to the amount charged, regardless of cost.
Sex Factors
Maleness or femaleness as a constituent element or influence contributing to the production of a result. It may be applicable to the cause or effect of a circumstance. It is used with human or animal concepts but should be differentiated from SEX CHARACTERISTICS, anatomical or physiological manifestations of sex, and from SEX DISTRIBUTION, the number of males and females in given circumstances.
Disabled Children
Demography
Catchment Area (Health)
A geographic area defined and served by a health program or institution.
Ambulatory Care
Health care services provided to patients on an ambulatory basis, rather than by admission to a hospital or other health care facility. The services may be a part of a hospital, augmenting its inpatient services, or may be provided at a free-standing facility.
Vulnerable Populations
Adolescent Health Services
Organized services to provide health care to adolescents, ages ranging from 13 through 18 years.
Fee-for-Service Plans
Method of charging whereby a physician or other practitioner bills for each encounter or service rendered. In addition to physicians, other health care professionals are reimbursed via this mechanism. Fee-for-service plans contrast with salary, per capita, and prepayment systems, where the payment does not change with the number of services actually used or if none are used. (From Discursive Dictionary of Health Care, 1976)
Multivariate Analysis
A set of techniques used when variation in several variables has to be studied simultaneously. In statistics, multivariate analysis is interpreted as any analytic method that allows simultaneous study of two or more dependent variables.
Public Health Informatics
Outcome and Process Assessment (Health Care)
Mental Disorders
United States Dept. of Health and Human Services
A cabinet department in the Executive Branch of the United States Government concerned with administering those agencies and offices having programs pertaining to health and human services.
Medical Savings Accounts
Chronic Disease
Diseases which have one or more of the following characteristics: they are permanent, leave residual disability, are caused by nonreversible pathological alteration, require special training of the patient for rehabilitation, or may be expected to require a long period of supervision, observation, or care. (Dictionary of Health Services Management, 2d ed)
Retrospective Studies
Studies used to test etiologic hypotheses in which inferences about an exposure to putative causal factors are derived from data relating to characteristics of persons under study or to events or experiences in their past. The essential feature is that some of the persons under study have the disease or outcome of interest and their characteristics are compared with those of unaffected persons.
Budgets
Detailed financial plans for carrying out specific activities for a certain period of time. They include proposed income and expenditures.
African Americans
Persons living in the United States having origins in any of the black groups of Africa.
Reproductive Health Services
Continental Population Groups
Health Records, Personal
Longitudinal patient-maintained records of individual health history and tools that allow individual control of access.
Longitudinal Studies
Cost of Illness
The personal cost of acute or chronic disease. The cost to the patient may be an economic, social, or psychological cost or personal loss to self, family, or immediate community. The cost of illness may be reflected in absenteeism, productivity, response to treatment, peace of mind, or QUALITY OF LIFE. It differs from HEALTH CARE COSTS, meaning the societal cost of providing services related to the delivery of health care, rather than personal impact on individuals.
Family Health
The health status of the family as a unit including the impact of the health of one member of the family on the family as a unit and on individual family members; also, the impact of family organization or disorganization on the health status of its members.
Government Agencies
Administrative units of government responsible for policy making and management of governmental activities.
Residence Characteristics
Elements of residence that characterize a population. They are applicable in determining need for and utilization of health services.
Public Policy
Cost-Benefit Analysis
A method of comparing the cost of a program with its expected benefits in dollars (or other currency). The benefit-to-cost ratio is a measure of total return expected per unit of money spent. This analysis generally excludes consideration of factors that are not measured ultimately in economic terms. Cost effectiveness compares alternative ways to achieve a specific set of results.
National Institutes of Health (U.S.)
An operating division of the US Department of Health and Human Services. It is concerned with the overall planning, promoting, and administering of programs pertaining to health and medical research. Until 1995, it was an agency of the United States PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE.
Regression Analysis
Procedures for finding the mathematical function which best describes the relationship between a dependent variable and one or more independent variables. In linear regression (see LINEAR MODELS) the relationship is constrained to be a straight line and LEAST-SQUARES ANALYSIS is used to determine the best fit. In logistic regression (see LOGISTIC MODELS) the dependent variable is qualitative rather than continuously variable and LIKELIHOOD FUNCTIONS are used to find the best relationship. In multiple regression, the dependent variable is considered to depend on more than a single independent variable.
Quality of Life
Databases, Factual
Extensive collections, reputedly complete, of facts and data garnered from material of a specialized subject area and made available for analysis and application. The collection can be automated by various contemporary methods for retrieval. The concept should be differentiated from DATABASES, BIBLIOGRAPHIC which is restricted to collections of bibliographic references.