Untitled Flashcards Set
Vocabulary List: Lesson 1
Providers: people or organizations that provide health care, including doctors, nurses, clinics, and
agencies.
Facilities: in medicine, places where health care is delivered or administered, including hospitals, long-
term care facilities, and treatment centers.
Payers: people or organizations paying for healthcare services.
Long-term care (LTC): care given in long-term care facilities (LTCF) for people who need 24-hour skilled
care.
Skilled care: medically necessary care given by a skilled nurse or therapist; is available 24 hours a day.
Length of stay: the number of days a person stays in a healthcare facility.
Terminal illness: a disease or condition that will eventually cause death.
Chronic illness: a disease or condition that is long-term or long-lasting and requires management of
symptoms.
Home health care: care that Vocabulary List: Lesson 2
Activities of daily living (ADLs): daily personal care tasks, such as bathing; caring for skin, nails, hair, and teeth; dressing; toileting; eating and drinking; walking; and transferring.
Assistive or adaptive devices: special equipment that helps a person who is ill or disabled to perform activities of daily living.
Charting: writing down important information and observations about residents.
Professional: having to do with work or a job.
Personal: relating to life outside one’s job, such as family, friends, and home life.
Professionalism: how a person behaves when on the job; it includes how a person dresses, the words he uses, and the things he talks about.
Compassionate: being caring, concerned, considerate, empathetic, and understanding.
Empathy: entering into the feelings of others.
Sympathy: sharing in the feelings and difficulties of others.
Tactful: showing sensitivity and having a sense of what is appropriate when dealing with others.
Conscientious: guided by a sense of right and wrong; having principles.
Chain of command: the line of authority within a facility or agency.
Liability: a legal term that means someone can be held responsible for harming someone else.
Scope of practice: defines the things that healthcare providers are legally allowed to do and how to do them correctly.
Delegation: transferring responsibility to a person for a specific task. place in a person’s home.
Diagnoses: physicians’ determinations of an illness.
Assisted living: residences for people who do not need skilled, 24-hour care, but do require some help
with daily care.
Dementia: the serious loss of mental abilities, such as thinking, remembering, reasoning, and
communicating.
Adult day services: care for people who need some assistance or supervision during certain hours, but
who do not live in the facility where care is given.
Acute care: 24-hour skilled care for short-term illnesses or injuries; generally given in hospitals and
ambulatory surgical centers.
Subacute care: care given in a hospital or in a long-term care facility for people who need less care than
for an acute illness, but more care than for a chronic illness.
Outpatient care: care given for less than 24 hours for people who have had treatments or surgery and
need short-term skilled care.
Rehabilitation: care given in facilities or homes by a specialist to restore or improve function after an
illness or injury.
Hospice care: holistic, compassionate care given to dying people and their families.
Health maintenance organizations (HMOs): a method of health insurance in which a person has to use a
particular doctor or group of doctors except in case of emergency.
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Preferred provider organizations (PPOs): a network of providers that contract to provide health services
to a group of people.
Managed care: a system or strategy of managing health care in a way that controls costs.
Activities of daily living (ADLs): daily personal care tasks, such as bathing; caring for skin, nails, hair, and
teeth; dressing; toileting; eating and drinking; walking; and transferring.
Catheters: thin tubes inserted into the body to drain or inject fluids.
Policy: a course of action that should be taken every time a certain situation occurs.
Procedure: a method, or way, of doing something.
Cite: in a long-term care facility, to find a problem through a survey.
Joint Commission: an independent, not-for-profit organization that evaluates and accredits healthcare
organizations.
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS): a federal agency within the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services that is responsible for Medicare and Medicaid, among many other
responsibilities.
Medicare: a federal health insurance program for people who are 65 or older, are disabled, or are ill and
cannot work.
Medicaid: a medical assistance program for low-income people.
Culture change: a term given to the process of transforming services for elders so that they are based on
the values and practices of the person receiving care; core values include choice, dignity, respect, self-
determination, and purposeful living.
Person-directed care: a type of care that places the emphasis on the person needing care and his or her
individuality and capabilities