| PRC | packed red cells; peer review committee; phase response curve; plasma renin concentration; professio... |
|---|---|
| ADFS | alternative delivery and financing system |
| AFS | acquired or adult Fanconi syndrome; alternative financing system; American Fertility Society; antifi... |
| EPF | early pregnancy factor; endocarditis parietalis fibroplastica; endothelial proliferating factor; est... |
| AHCA | Agency for Health Care Administration; American Health Care Association |
| quality assurance, health care | Activities and programs intended to assure or improve the quality of care in either a defined medical setting or a program. The concept includes the assessment or evaluation of the quality of care; identification of problems or shortcomings in the delivery of care; designing activities to overcome these deficiencies; and follow-up monitoring to ensure effectiveness of corrective steps. (12 Dec 1998) |
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| quality indicators, health care | Norms, criteria, standards, and other direct qualitative and quantitative measures used in determinng the quality of health care. (12 Dec 1998) |
| quality of health care | The levels of excellence which characterise the health service or health care provided based on accepted standards of quality. (12 Dec 1998) |
| International Classification of Health Problems in Primary Care | A classification of diseases, conditions and problems arranged for use in primary care where diagnostic precision is seldom possible. (05 Mar 2000) |
| united states agency for health care policy and research | An agency of the public health service established in 1990 to "provide indexing, abstracting, translating, publishing, and other services leading to a more effective and timely dissemination of information on research, demonstration projects, and evaluations with respect to health care to public and private entities and individuals engaged in the improvement of health care delivery.." it supersedes the national centre for health services research. (12 Dec 1998) |
| models, statistical | Statistical formulations or analyses which, when applied to data and found to fit the data, are then used to verify the assumptions and parameters used in the analysis. Examples of statistical models are the linear model, binomial model, polynomial model, two-parameter model, etc. (12 Dec 1998) |
| statistical distributions | The complete summaries of the frequencies of the values or categories of a measurement made on a group of items, a population, or other collection of data. The distribution tells either how many or what proportion of the group was found to have each value (or each range of values) out of all the possible values that the quantitative measure can have. (12 Dec 1998) |
| statistical genetics | The study of the applications of principles of statistics to problems in genetics. (05 Mar 2000) |
| statistical model | A formal representation for a class of processes that allows a means of analyzing results from experimental studies, such as the Poisson model or the general linear model; it need not propose a process literally interpretable in the context of the individual case. (05 Mar 2000) |
| statistical significance | Statistical methods allow an estimate to be made of the probability of the observed degree of association between variables, and from this the statistical significance can be expressed, commonly in terms of the P value. (05 Mar 2000) |
| Neyman-Pearson statistical hypothesis | A formal conjecture about the numerical value of a parameter to be tested exclusively in the light of an immediate set of data without attention to prior knowledge or convictions and ignoring other sets of evidence treated in a similar fashion. The answer is a statement not about whether the hypothesis is true but whether it is an acceptable explanation of the data or should be rejected in favour of another hypothesis. (05 Mar 2000) |
| data interpretation, statistical | Application of statistical procedures to analyze specific observed or assumed facts from a particular study. (12 Dec 1998) |
| Diagnostic and Statistical Manual | An American Psychiatric Association publication which classifies mental illnesses.Currently in its fourth edition (DSM-IV) and first published in 1952, the manual provides health practitioners with a comprehensive system for diagnosing mental illnesses based on specific ideational and behavioural symptoms. The DSM approach supplants older, less rigorous methods of diagnosis, and as such represents a major step forward for the field of psychiatry. It consists of five axes covering clinical syndromes, developmental and personality disorders, physical disorders, severity of psychosocial stressors, and global assessment of functioning. It is used primarily in the U.S.; elsewhere, the World Health Organization's International Classification of Diseases is preferred. (05 Mar 2000) |
| factor analysis, statistical | A set of statistical methods for analyzing the correlations among several variables in order to estimate the number of fundamental dimensions that underlie the observed data and to describe and measure those dimensions. It is used frequently in the development of scoring systems for rating scales and questionnaires. (12 Dec 1998) |
| rate setting and review | A method of examining and setting levels of payments. (12 Dec 1998) |