Category: P

A place where medicine is prepared and dispensed. A retail drug store is one type of pharmacy. In a hospital, the pharmacy is a department where medicine is prepared to be administered to inpatients, and to be kept in areas where drugs are administered; for example, the emergency department. Usually, a committee of the medical…

The liquidizing of cataracts and their removal by suction, using ultrasound.  

Groups within the American Hospital Association (AHA) who are made up of personal members representing various disciplines in health care. In 1995, PMGs exist for 16 groups with a total of 40,000 members. AHA’s Division of PMGs has the goal of helping the members of the PMG to deal with the changes in health care,…

An allied health professional for whom the American Medical Association’s Committee on Allied Health Education and Accreditation (CAHEA) has accredited education programs. A health care professional, formally known as a clinical perfusion scientist, who manages extracorporeal circulation of blood and operates the heart-lung machine.  

Correction of the narrowing of the aortic valve of the heart by expanding a balloon within the valve. The balloon is at the tip of a catheter (a thin tube) which is threaded through an artery to the heart after insertion through the skin (“percutaneous”). The process requires viewing the progress of the catheter by…

A computer that accepts its instructions via a pen-like device instead of a keyboard. In the mid-1990’s these computers were successful in small specialty niches where a high degree of portability was of critical importance and a relatively narrow set of tasks needed to be accomplished (such as package delivery services). Problems with the computer’s…

The period of time it will take a new item of equipment to produce revenues or result in savings equal to its cost.  

A federal law which requires most hospitals, nursing homes, and other patient care institutions to ask all admitted patients whether they have made advance directives as to their wishes concerning the use of medical interventions for themselves in case of the loss of their own decision-making capacity. The institution is required to furnish each patient…

A research group supported by the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research (AHCPR) to conduct a specific study on a topic such as the values of various options for the treatment of prostate cancer and benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), the use of serum prostatic specific antigen (PSA) in screening for prostatic cancer, values of…

A method of quantifying severity of illness based on the perceived needs of the patient for diagnostic and therapeutic services. This method, as currently applied, gives only one assessment for the episode of care, and relies on the subjective judgment of professional reviewers of the patient’s medical record rather than objective data. Thus it does…