Category: S

A service which is necessary for the operation of the institution, but for which direct charges are inappropriate. Heating, for example, is essential, but is not itemized on the patient’s bill. The cost of support services is recovered by allocating the costs to the revenue-producing services, using an appropriate accounting method.  

A system (model) for developing objective estimates of the probable survival over a 180-day period of seriously ill hospitalized adults. The acronym comes from the name of the study which developed the method: “Study to Understand Prognoses and Preferences for Outcomes and Risks of Treatment”. The model uses each patient’s diagnosis, age, number of days…

A term applied to giant, vertically integrated health care firms which some have predicted will appear in the U.S. Such firms are envisioned as national in scope, market-driven, capitalizing on their “brand names,” and specializing in contractual services to large nationwide industries.  

A legal rule, applied by some courts, which requires a guardian or other person making treatment decisions on behalf of an incompetent person to base that decision on what the incompetent person himself would want under the circumstances, as distinguished from what the decision-maker believes would be in the best interests of the incompetent patient.…

A term often applied to a physician, nurse, or dentist whose field of special training, experience, and, usually, practice is a subdivision of a broader specialty. For example, a cardiologist is a physician who has narrowed his field from the specialty of all of internal medicine to the subspecialty concerned with just the diseases of…

Information which is organized in such a fashion that it deals with a single field or branch of knowledge, in contrast with problem-oriented information, which bears directly on a specific question asked or on a specific problem for which a solution is sought. A standard textbook or a descriptive book provide subject-oriented information, such as…

Strategic planning is based on the principle that, with goals and objectives specified, strategies can be developed for achieving them, resources can be generated to implement the strategies, and progress can be continually monitored. The concept behing strategic positioning is that it is often more important for an organization to expend its energy on being…

A term applied to each “product line” of an organization employing product line management (PLM). An SBU is a more or less distinct line of business (for example, in a hospital, knee replacement surgery or alcoholism rehabilitation) which has a specific market, resource requirements, and management demands. The hospital operating under PLM acts as though…

Making a person unable to reproduce. Sterilization may be undertaken simply to prevent conception (“contraceptive sterilization”), to prevent inheritance of a mental or physical disability or disease (“eugenic sterilization”), or because bearing children would be harmful to the individual (“therapeutic sterilization”). To prevent inappropriate sterilizations, especially of those unable to give voluntary consent, there are…

The process of treating an object in such a manner that all living microorganisms are destroyed. Surgical instruments and dressings, for example, must be sterilized so that they do not transmit infections. Sterilization may be accomplished by heat, certain chemicals, radiation, ultraviolet light, or other means.