Category: L

  • Local health department

    A unit of local government which is the action arm of national and state public health agencies. It typically carries out some clinical services, environmental services, and support services. Clinical services may include, for example, dental health, occupational health, nursing, maternal and child health, family planning, communicable disease, and Women, Infants and Children’s Programs (WIC).…

  • Local area network

    The hardware and software allowing two or more computers to be connected together over a small geographic area (typically an office, or one building). It is distinguished from a “wide area network” (WAN) which connects computers, other networks, or both over large geographical distances.  

  • Liquidity

    The ability to turn assets into cash.  

  • Life support

    Maintenance of vital body functions, e.g. breathing and heartbeat, to sustain life. A system involving equipment and procedures that provides all or some of the bodily functions necessary to maintain life. Life support may involve providing oxygen, nutrients, and water and eliminating carbon dioxide and other body wastes. The most commonly used form of life…

  • Life care

    A long-term care arrangement (“alternative”) in which all care required for the lifetime of the participant is provided. A retirement home which agrees to provide not only facilities for independent living, but also nursing care and hospitalization to residents as needed, is a “life care community.”  

  • Licensed

    Having a legal right, granted by a government agency, in compliance with a statute governing a profession (such as medicine or nursing), occupation, or the operation of an activity (such as a hospital).  

  • Leveraged

    Financed largely by borrowed funds.  

  • Leverage

    Financing by borrowing.  

  • Level of care

    The amount (intensity) and kind of professional nursing care required for a patient in order to achieve the desired medical and nursing care objectives for the patient, that is, to carry out the orders of the attending physician and to meet the patient’s nursing care needs. The term “level of care” is primarily used outside…

  • Legacy system

    A computer term referring to an inherited set of independent computer systems within an organization (enterprise). The term comes into use as enterprises seek to consolidate the systems of the past into a single information source, either by somehow linking them together so that they can communicate with each other (and with the inquirer) or,…