Health-Care Consultants Key Terms

Service an evolving clientele with health-care consultants key terms
By R.N. Dolgener, Special Education Teacher Consultants who are considering extending their services to medical professionals or hospitals should study up on some health-care consultants key terms, just to make sure they're speaking the new language of hospital and health-care consultants. Whether your specialty is information technology, marketing, financial management and billing or human resources, there are facets of the national health-care quality movement that apply to every industry and every consultant.
 

Total Quality Management, or TQM

Although the Total Quality Management theory of W. Edwards Deming is applicable in many industries, it has become a popular tool in health-care quality improvement and consulting. Also called TQM, the theory requires that a health-care organization strive for continuous improvement of every business facet -- including customer service, revenue cycle management and human resources - through teamwork, strategic planning, leadership, communication and recognition.
Try: Read more about Deming's 14 points defining TQM at Management for the Rest of Us.

Medical informatics

Medical informatics, also known as health-care informatics or biomedical informatics, is an interdisciplinary field that combines emerging information technology with medical data for the more efficient and effective use of health-care information. Through medical informatics, statistical science plays an integral role in management decision-making support using biostatistics and engineering.
Try: Get more information at the American Medical Informatics Association and the Oregon Health and Science University.

Patient satisfaction

Patient satisfaction is the newest buzzword in health-care quality improvement. It's a TQM tool most often measured through patient satisfaction surveys and used to improve the delivery of patient services in all areas.
Try: See what the American Academy of Family Physicians has to say about the usefulness of patient satisfaction surveys as a TQM tool.

Electronic medical record, or EMR

As modern businesses move toward a paperless business model, health care is no exception, moving from paper-heavy medical records to electronic medical records (EMR). In the consulting world, the move to an EMR-based health system requires help from information technology, process improvement and change management experts.
Try: Explore the legal and technical ramifications of switching from paper to electronic medical records at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society. 

Core measures

The Joint Commission has set forth a set of National Quality Measures, or core measures, by which hospitals must organize quality improvement efforts to include performance improvement teams, data analysis and reporting and physician pay for performance programs. The core measures target specific hospital practices that need improvement to reduce or eliminate morbidity and mortality that is attributable to poor or outdated standards of care.
Try: Read more about specific core measures at The Joint Commission. 

Computerized physician order entry, or CPOE

Computerized physician order entry, or CPOE, is a safety initiative designed to eliminate medication errors by involving the physician directly in the medication prescribing process. When a physician orders a medication change or a new prescription for a patient, instead of writing the order by hand or dictating the order for another health-care professional to write on the patient's paper chart, CPOE requires that the physician enter the medication information into the electronic medical record to ensure proper dosing instructions.
Try: Learn more about CPOE from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.