Minimal care

Medical care given to patients who can ambulate and are partially self-sufficient, requiring limited therapeutic and diagnostic services, and in the final stages of recovery. Services might include administration of medications and treatments that cannot be done by the patient and giving self-care instructions and posthospitalization health maintenance.

Minimal pain

In a workers’ compensation case, pain that would represent an annoyance but would cause no handicap in the performance of the particular activity and would be regarded as a nonratable permanent disability.

minimum data set (MDS)

Core set of screening, clinical, and functional elements used for long-term care patient assessment. Resource utilization group (RUG-III) is a classification system based on MDS. Medicare prospective payment systems and skilled nursing facilities use MDS as the data for classifying patients for case mix. Beginning in June 1998, electronic collection and transmission of MDS data were required.

Minimum deposit business

System to use policy loans to pay premiums in which the policy owner instructs the insurer to pay the premium out of the policy’s cash value and to bill the policy owner for a premium only if the cash value is insufficient to pay the premium. Also called leveraged business .