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Jargon Buster A-Z
 

IMPRESS NHS JARGON BUSTER  - SCROLL DOWN TO A-Z SEARCH

Third edition of the Jargon Buster  available in hard copy and here as pdf (April 2010)  Does not take account of post-election changes. The online version is updated periodically to take account of these.

There is short Social Care and Housing Jargon Buster  available from IMPRESS too, with thanks to the Long Term Conditions Delivery Support Team.    All the terms are in the A-Z as well.

 Please note that a number of the DH websites, including NHS Evidence, were reviewed post-Election May 2010, and so some links may not work.  If this is the case, please contact us to let us know and we'll correct quickly.

IMPRESS NHS JARGON BUSTER

Introduction

The Jargon Buster A-Z (see below) aims to provide a simple guide to the many  terms in the NHS in England that describe how healthcare and social care will be planned, measured and paid for.  Some of the terms also apply to Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.   They highlight the relevance for delivering respiratory care.

We would also highly recommend the Junior Doctors Guide to the NHS.  This is a very helpful guide for all who work in the NHS.    As a guide for junior doctors, we would hope that future editions might also include something on the  building blocks of coding, financial flows and casemix complexity because it is often the junior doctors who take on the responsibility of setting the coding standard from day one of discharge and this is a key responsibility, since it is this coding activity that drives planning.  However, IMPRESS can highly recommend the commentary in our guide to Respiratory Coding to fill this gap.

Before starting the alphabetical glossary you may find it helpful to look at Figure 1 that describes how the various policies contribute to the three main policy aims to:

•    improve patient care, and particularly to reduce inequalities in access to care,
•    improve the patient’s experience of services
•    achieve better value for money. 

Whilst this figure is updated in new Conservative policy, the basic direction remains the same.

A-Z

  
Jargon Buster A-Z

   Filters:  #   A   B   C   D   E   F   G   H   I   J   K   L   M   N   O   P   Q   R   S   T   U   V   W   X   Y   Z   All

Health and Wellbeing boards

These will be statutory bodies from April 2012 to enable councils to lead on integrated working and commissioning across the NHS, public health and social care in collaboration with other agencies.

 

Healthcare Resource Groups (HRGs)

A way of grouping the hospital treatment of patients by casemix to allow analysis of the appropriateness, efficiency and effectiveness of care. Each group contains cases that are clinically similar and will consume similar quantities of healthcare resources. There are, for example, a number of codes which would naturally map to the HRG 'COPD' e.g.emphysema; chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, unspecified; chronic obstructive pulmonary disease with acute exacerbation etc..These should all represent a similar demand on resources. Currently, the cost of such an admission is derived from an average length of stay in hospital and to define the care in somewhat greater detail, the HRGs are split on the basis of complications and comorbidity. One can almost add on an extra day for every comorbid factor e.g. diabetes, A/F. The national tariff (see below) is calculated at HRG level, but activity is usually reported at specialty level.  Steve Connellan of the BTS is leading work to refine the Respiratory HRGs further (v4). For example he hopes there will be the option to code for ambulatory care and for short COPD admissions (eg Hospital at Home), acute exacerbations without or with ventilatory support and whether it is via NIV or intubation. HRGs do not include primary care coding or resource use.  See Appendix 2. For the full respiratory list see letter D in the HRG definitions manual: click here.

On behalf of the BTS, Steve Connellan has produced (September 2008) an extremely useful guide to coding respiratory care (see here) that can act as a discussion with governance leads about diagnosis and coding ambiguities, the importance of recording complications and comorbidities, greater use of the new OPCS codes including physiology measurement, AHP activity and interventions such a NIV support and oxygen assessment, creation of formal links with commissioners to consult on care packages, activity outside PbR and innovative approaches to integrated care.

 

High Quality Care For All

– see Next Stage Review

 

Hospital Episode Statistics (HES)

This is a national data warehouse for England of care provided by NHS hospitals and NHS hospital patients treated elsewhere.  Click here for further information.

 

Hypoxia/hypoxaemia

shortage of oxygen/low oxygen level in the blood.  Identified using a pulse oximeter, a peg-like probe usually placed on the finger,  that measures oxygen saturation in the blood. May or may not be associated with breathlessness.

 

     
NHS Jargon Buster

The last printed version (please note the online version is more up to date) of the IMPRESS NHS Jargon Buster (pdf) is available to download here

  
Jargon Buster - HTML version
  
IMPRESS is grateful to  its corporate supporters - AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim/Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline who provide grants for this independent programme of study
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