H Appointment correct answers Selection for membership in a medical professional staff or to a
practitioner panel.
H Appraisal correct answers Initial evaluation by peers of a practitioner's competency to provide
care and services to patients in or for a healthcare origination. Appraisal may include
credentialing, privileging, proctoring and appointment.
H Benchmark correct answers A comparative "best" as baseline for improvement.
H Clinical Path correct answers A prospective, detailed, strategic treatment regimen, or
daily/intermittent protocol for patient care, designed to identify and integrate key activities,
interventions, and services for certain patient conditions. Clinical paths are applicable across the
continuum of care, e.g., in acute care form pre-admission and pre-operative treatment through
the hospital stay to discharge and post-discharge phases of care, including home care.
Clinical/critical paths are designed to include clinical performance criteria for specified time
periods of intervals, organized by categories of care needs, e.g., diagnostics, treatments, activity,
medications, psychosocial, etc. They are useful tools for measuring actual performance.
H Crisis Management correct answers 1) Forecasting potential crisis and planning how to deal
with them (proactive) and 2) When a crisis occurs, identifying its full nature, intervening to
minimize damage, and recovering (reactive).
H Dephi Technique correct answers A structured communication technique, a systematic,
interactive forecasting method which relies on a panel of experts. The experts answer
questionnaires in two or more rounds. After each round, a facilitator provides an anonymous
summary of the experts' forecasts from the previous round as well as the reasons they provided
for their judgments. Thus, experts are encouraged to revise their earlier answers in light of the
replies of other members of their panel. It is believed that during this process the range of the
answers will decrease and the group will converge towards the "correct" answer. Finally, the
process is stopped after a pre-defined stop criterion (e.g. number of rounds, achievement of
consensus, stability of results) and the mean or median scores of the final rounds determine the
results.
H Demand Management correct answers Term from economics; in project management it refers
to meeting customer expectations; in managed care it refers to influencing access to medical
care.
H Disease Management correct answers Disease management is a system of coordinated
healthcare interventions and communications for populations with conditions in which patient
self-care efforts are significant.
H Ethic correct answers A set of principles of right conduct.
H Ethics correct answers Rules or standards governing conduct.
,H Event correct answers An occurrence that is either deemed to be, or results in a significant
problem. e.g., sentinel event, adverse event, near miss event.
H E&CF Chart correct answers Events and Causal Factors: Used to find root causes. Combines a
flowchart and affinity diagram to identify both the sequence of events and relevant conditions
affecting each event.
H Failure Mode correct answers The way a process can fail to function or fail to provide the
desired result; an undesirable variation in a process.
H FMEA correct answers Failure Mode and Effects Analysis: A team-based quality
improvement tool hat prospectively assesses, identifies, and improves steps in a process to
reasonably ensure a safe and clinically desirable outcome [NCPS]: A systematic mechanism to
identify and prevent product and process failures before they occur.
H Flowchart correct answers A pictorial representation displaying the actual-sequence of steps
and their inter-relationships in a specific process in order to identify hand-offs, inefficiencies,
redundancies, inspections, and waiting steps and/or the ideal-sequence of steps, once the actual
process is known.
H Force Field Analysis correct answers A change management tool. Looks at forces for and
against a change; 1) to decide if the change should be attempted or 2) used to create strategies to
increase support and decrease opposition.
H Gantt Chart correct answers Project planning tool for developing schedules; a graphic display
of individual parts of a quality improvement process as bars on a horizontal time scale.
H HAI correct answers Healthcare-Associated Infection: Replaces "nosocomial infection"
(hospital-acquired) because it implies all health care and is not limited to hospitals. {More
general Healthcare-Acquired Conditions {HAC}}
H Iatrogenic correct answers An infection or other complication of treatment induced in a patient
by a physician's or other licensed independent practitioner's activity, manner, or therapy.
H Indicator correct answers "Performance Measure": Includes data definitions, as well as
numerator and denominator statements, to accurately specify what is being measured.
H Integrated Delivery System - Horizontal correct answers Multi-institutional entity with
coordinated functions, activities, or operating units that are at the same stage or segment of the
continuum of care, e.g., hospital system.
H Integrated Delivery System - Vertical correct answers A network of entities that provide and
coordinate healthcare to a defined population across the entire continuum of care: prevention,
ambulatory, subacute, acute, and long term.
, H Interrelationship Diagram correct answers A tool that allows a team to analyze all the
interrelated cause-and-effect relationships and factors involved in a complex problem;
distinguish between issues that serve as drivers and those that are outcomes; and describe desired
outcomes.
H Leadership Group correct answers "Individuals in senior positions with clearly defined, unique
responsibilities." Possible groups include governance, management, medical staff, nursing, other
clinical staff. An individual may be a member of more than one group.
H LIP correct answers Licensed Independent Practitioner: Any individual who is professionally
licensed by the state (US) and permitted by the organization to provide patient care services
without direction or supervision, within the scope of that license.
H Management correct answers The sum of the activities of: planning, organizing, staffing,
directing, coordinating, and working to improve human and material resources toward the
achievement of stated goals.
H Medicare correct answers Age 65+, permanent kidney failure, and disabled. Managed by
CMS.
H Medicaid correct answers Low-income, managed by each state.
H Mission correct answers The written expression of the origination's overall, broad purpose and
role (what/who the organization is). In a quality improvement environment it is expected that the
statement of mission will express a high-priority, comprehensive commitment to patient care, to
quality in all activities, and to service to the community. The mission statement is the basis for
the formation of organizational vision, values, goals, and objectives.
H Monitoring and Evaluation correct answers Historically a data collection process that focused
on high-priority quality-of-care issues and was designed to facilitate problem solving and the
identification of opportunities to improve.
H Negligence correct answers Lack of proper care, as judged by peers.
A person who alleges negligent medical malpractice must prove four elements: (1) a duty of care
was owed by the physician; (2) the physician violated the applicable standard of care; (3) the
person suffered a compensable injury; and (4) the injury was caused in fact and proximately
caused by the substandard conduct. The burden of proving these elements is on the plaintiff in a
malpractice lawsuit.
H Negligent Conduct correct answers Doing what a reasonable person would not do: failure to
do what a reasonable person would do (based on set standards and under like circumstances and
training)
Gross Negligence: is failure to act if there is known or suspected risk resulting in adverse impact
or death.