Hospital or home health care agency that may legally offer hospice care.

Licensed and accredited institution with organized medical staff, permanent facilities that include inpatient beds, and medical services including physician services and continuous nursing services for the diagnosis and treatment of patients with a variety of medical conditions, both surgical and nonsurgical, and preventive medical services.
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UK: Defined in health insurances and hospital cash plans as a privately owned or National Health Service hospital with facilities for medical and surgical treatment registered in the UK with a local authority in accordance with the Public Health Acts. Some types of establishment are not included in this definition: residential nursing homes, convalescent homes, hospices, health hydros, nature cure clinics and similar establishments or private beds registered as nursing homes.

High cost, high volume, complicating conditions or major complicating conditions that, when present as secondary diagnoses on insurance claims, result in a higher-paying diagnosis-related group category and are reasonably preventable through the application of evidence-based guidelines. Also see never events .

Proposal of action or method used to speed admitting a patient to a hospital and to assist with quick reimbursement to the hospital. Also called hospital admissions program (HAP) .

1. Facility that has established a contractual arrangement to provide inpatient care for members of a managed care plan. 2. Inpatient facility where a physician has admitting privileges. 3. Facility that has an established relationship with a medical school.

Groups of hospitals that join together to share services and make purchases to reduce their costs. See also integrated delivery system .

These include differentials between hospital labor and nonlabor indices compared with general economy labor and nonlabor indices; rates of admission incidence; the trend toward treating less complicated cases in outpatient settings; and continued improvement in diagnosis-related group (DRG) coding.

Businesses that do retrospective audits for hospital facilities to try to obtain some percentage of savings from billed insurance claims.