Vital Signs

AHIMA is the professional association for people who manage health information, founded in 1928 and renamed several times as the field moved from records to data. This post explains the HIMSS Dictionary listing, then walks through AHIMA’s history, its eight current credentials, its Code of Ethics, and how it differs from HIMSS.

A management service organization (MSO) is an entity that handles the administrative, nonclinical work of running a medical practice, and it can be owned by investors, hospitals, physician groups, or health plans. This post explains the HIMSS Dictionary definition, then reviews five sources: dermatology, gastroenterology, and orthopedic overviews of private equity, a study of dental insurer concentration, and an analysis of physician affiliation and site of care costs.

Regional extension centers were local support organizations funded through ONC under the HITECH Act to help providers move toward meaningful use of certified EHRs. This post explains the HIMSS Dictionary definition, then reviews five studies: a national evaluation of 62 centers, a rural practice analysis, a county-level study of 2,715 counties, a tally of 19,000 reported issues, and a study of sustaining meaningful use.

Out of network describes clinicians and facilities that sit outside a given health plan’s contracted network. This post explains the HIMSS Dictionary definition and why network status data matters in registration and billing, then reviews four studies: radiologists’ out-of-network claims falling from 12.6 percent to 1.1 percent, two analyses of state surprise billing laws, and a study of how balance billing bans changed emergency department use.

The Life Safety Code is a set of fire protection requirements meant to give health care facilities a reasonable degree of safety from fire, smoke, and panic, published by the National Fire Protection Association. This post explains the HIMSS Dictionary definition and the CMS rule that adopted the 2012 edition, then reviews four studies: a nurse manager’s guide to dialysis surveys, a study of 5,914 nursing homes and hurricane exposure, a Hurricane Michael cohort of 294 homes, and a survey-metric analysis.

A payer is an outside organization that funds or insures healthcare costs, from insurers and managed care plans to ACOs, government programs, and administrators. This post explains the HIMSS Dictionary definition and the 2024 national spending figures from CMS, then reviews four 2026 studies: interviews with nine health system and payer leaders on digital tool adoption, a payer-perspective model of stroke rehabilitation costs, a Greek dialysis micro-costing study, and an all-payer analysis of 77,248 patients.

J-codes are a group of Healthcare Common Procedure Coding System Level II codes beginning with the letter J that identify certain drugs and supplies. This post explains the HIMSS Dictionary definition and the HIPAA code set rule behind it, then reviews six sources: the federal code set regulation, CMS’s description of HCPCS Level II, an oncology drug code database with 332 codes, a 2025 cohort study that found patients through J-codes, a 2011 managed care analysis of buy-and-bill drug billing, and a 2026 study of payment methods in hospital contracts.

FISMA is U.S. legislation that sets a comprehensive framework for protecting government information, operations, and assets against natural and man-made threats, signed in 2002 as part of the Electronic Government Act. This post explains the HIMSS Dictionary definition and the 2014 update, the Federal Information Security Modernization Act, then reviews five primary sources: the 2014 law, the NIST FISMA page, FIPS 200, NIST SP 800-53 Revision 5, and NIST SP 800-37 Revision 2.

eHealth is a broadly defined term for health care practice supported by information and communication technologies, covering records, remote care, and evidence-based practice. This post explains the HIMSS Dictionary definition, then reviews five sources: the WHO digital health strategy, a scoping review of how virtual care is measured, an umbrella review of telemedicine implementation across 973 primary studies, a meta-analysis of eHealth literacy in 12,390 nursing students, and a pilot of a digital self-management app for people on hemodialysis.

An electronic signature, or e-signature, is an electronic indication that a person intends to agree to a document or set of data, and it often carries the same legal commitment as a handwritten signature. This post explains the HIMSS Dictionary definition and the difference from a digital signature, then reviews five sources: the FDA’s electronic records rule in 21 CFR Part 11, a study of electronic and paper surgical consent, a randomized trial of a multimedia consent tool, a review of e-consent for research, and a review of digital consent in low-resource settings.

Out-of-pocket costs are expenses for medical care that insurance does not reimburse, including deductibles, coinsurance, copayments, and the full cost of services that are not covered. This post explains the term and reviews six studies: a 2026 claims analysis of 539,590 adults with diabetes or hypertension in high-deductible plans, a survey study of 147,254 adults linking high-deductible plans to survival among cancer survivors, 11 years of hospital cost sharing trends, and three studies of real-time benefit tools that show prescription costs in the EHR.

An ATCB, or Authorized Testing and Certification Body, is an entity that tests and certifies EHR technology against the standards, implementation specifications, and certification criteria adopted by the Secretary of Health and Human Services. This post explains the term, how the current ONC Health IT Certification Program in 45 CFR Part 170 separates certification bodies (ONC-ACBs) from testing laboratories (ONC-ATLs), and what recent studies found about real world testing results and safety-critical certification criteria.

An ASO, or administrative services only, arrangement is a contract in which an insurer or other firm performs administrative work for a self-funded plan without taking on the risk. This post explains the idea and the typical services, what a 2024 Health Affairs study found about the share of enrollees in ASO arrangements, what a 2026 interview study found about third-party administrator fees, and what a 2026 study found about a reference pricing program for self-funded employers.

HITAC, the Health Information Technology Advisory Committee, is a federal advisory committee created under the 21st Century Cures Act to recommend policies, standards, implementation specifications, and certification criteria to the National Coordinator for Health IT. This post explains what the statute says about its duties, target areas, and membership, and how two recent studies on USCDI alignment and FHIR-based data standards show the kind of work its recommendations affect.

An Ambulatory Payment Class, or APC, is a payment category used for outpatient claims under Medicare’s prospective payment system. This post explains how the federal regulations group clinically similar outpatient services into APCs, how weights and packaging work, and what a 2026 JAMA Health Forum study and a 2024 simulation found about site-neutral payment methods built on APC groups.

HIPAA administrative simplification is the part of the law that lets the Department of Health and Human Services require standards for electronic health care transactions, code sets, identifiers, and privacy and security measures. This post explains what each part means, what the federal regulations require of covered entities, and how later rules added ICD-10 code sets, provider identifiers, and operating rules for payments.

MyHealthEData is a federal initiative to empower patients by making sure they control their health care data and decide how it is used, while keeping it secure. It is led by CMS, ONC, NIH, and the VA. This post explains the initiative and its policy context, what a single-center study found about inpatient portal access and disparities after the information blocking rule, and what an API reference implementation proposed for patient-controlled data export.

A critical access hospital, or CAH, is a rural community hospital that receives cost-based reimbursement and meets criteria set out in the Medicare Conditions of Participation. This post explains the federal limits on beds and length of stay, what a 45-study systematic review found about health IT barriers in CAHs, what a national analysis found about rural AI adoption and evaluation, and what a Pennsylvania study found about nurse staffing.

Under HIPAA, use refers to handling individually identifiable health information, by sharing, applying, examining, or analyzing it, inside the entity that maintains it, which separates it from disclosure outside the entity. This post explains the distinction, the permitted uses framework, what an oncology study found about patient views on consent and data use after deliberation, and what Australian data custodians reported about barriers to sharing data.

An organized healthcare arrangement is a HIPAA concept in which participants share protected health information to manage a common enterprise and patients expect integrated care. This post explains the regulatory definition, what the Privacy Rule permits within an arrangement, including joint notices of privacy practices, what a survey of 115 hospitals found about notice readability, and what a California survey found about consumer views of data sharing.