Health Management Glossary

A

• Access to carePublic Health and Policy

  Access to care is the ability of people to obtain appropriate health services when needed, shaped by availability, affordability, acceptability and geographic accessibility.

• AccreditationQuality Management

  Accreditation is a process in which an external body assesses a health organisation against published standards and grants recognition if the standards are met.

• Action researchResearch Methods

  Action research is a participatory approach in which researchers and practitioners work together through cycles of planning, action, observation and reflection to solve practical problems and generate knowledge.

• Adverse eventPatient Safety

  An adverse event is an injury or harm to a patient caused by medical management rather than by the underlying disease.

• AgeismAgeing and Chronic Care

  Ageism is stereotyping, prejudice and discrimination against people on the basis of their age, most often directed at older adults.

• AI governanceDigital Health and AI

  AI governance is the set of policies, structures and processes that guide how artificial intelligence is selected, validated, deployed and monitored so that it is safe, lawful and accountable.

• Alarm fatiguePatient Safety

  Alarm fatigue is the desensitisation of clinicians to frequent, often non-actionable alarms, which leads to delayed or missed responses.

• Algorithmic biasDigital Health and AI

  Algorithmic bias is a systematic difference in how an algorithm performs or allocates resources across groups, producing unfair outcomes for some patients.

• Andersen behavioral modelPublic Health and Policy

  The Andersen behavioral model explains the use of health services as a function of predisposing characteristics, enabling resources and perceived or evaluated need.

• Appointment schedulingHospital Operations

  Appointment scheduling is the design of rules and systems that allocate patients to time slots in order to balance patient waiting, provider idle time and overtime.

• Artificial intelligence (AI)Digital Health and AI

  Artificial intelligence is the capacity of computer systems to perform tasks that normally require human judgement, such as recognising patterns, predicting outcomes, interpreting language and supporting decisions.

B

• BenchmarkingQuality Management

  Benchmarking is the systematic comparison of performance and practices with peers or best performers in order to identify gaps and learn from better practice.

• Bibliographic couplingBibliometrics

  Bibliographic coupling links two documents that cite one or more of the same references, indicating shared intellectual ground at the time of writing.

• Bibliometric analysisBibliometrics

  Bibliometric analysis is the quantitative study of publications, citations and other bibliographic data to describe the structure, development and impact of a research field.

• BottleneckHospital Operations

  A bottleneck is the step in a process with the lowest capacity, which limits the throughput of the whole system.

• Bradford’s lawBibliometrics

  Bradford's law describes the scattering of literature: a small core of journals publishes a large share of articles on a subject, followed by zones of journals with diminishing yield.

• BurnoutWorkforce and Leadership

  Burnout is a work-related syndrome of emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation or cynicism, and reduced sense of personal accomplishment that results from chronic job stress.

C

• Case study researchResearch Methods

  Case study research is an in-depth empirical inquiry into a contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context, especially when boundaries between phenomenon and context are unclear.

• Case-control studyResearch Methods

  A case-control study compares people with an outcome (cases) and without it (controls) to identify past exposures associated with the outcome.

• Catastrophic health expenditureHealth Economics

  Catastrophic health expenditure occurs when a household's out-of-pocket health spending exceeds a defined share of its income or capacity to pay.

• Causal inferenceResearch Methods

  Causal inference is the set of concepts and methods for drawing conclusions about cause and effect from data, especially observational data.

• Change managementWorkforce and Leadership

  Change management is the structured approach to preparing, supporting and guiding individuals and organisations through change.

• Chronic disease managementAgeing and Chronic Care

  Chronic disease management is the organised, proactive care of people with long-term conditions to maintain function, prevent complications and support self-management.

• Climate change and healthPublic Health and Policy

  Climate change and health refers to the effects of a changing climate on human health and to the role of health systems in mitigation and adaptation.

• Clinical decision support systemDigital Health and AI

  A clinical decision support system (CDSS) is software that gives clinicians patient-specific information, alerts or recommendations at the point of care to improve decisions.

• Clinical governanceQuality Management

  Clinical governance is a framework through which health organisations are accountable for continuously improving the quality of their services and safeguarding high standards of care.

• Clinical handoverPatient Safety

  Clinical handover is the transfer of professional responsibility and accountability for some or all aspects of a patient's care to another person or team.

• Clinical pathwayQuality Management

  A clinical pathway is a structured, multidisciplinary care plan that sets out the essential steps for patients with a specific condition over a defined period.

• Clinical practice guidelineQuality Management

  A clinical practice guideline is a set of systematically developed recommendations that help clinicians and patients make decisions about appropriate care for specific circumstances.

• Co-citation analysisBibliometrics

  Co-citation analysis measures how often two documents are cited together by later documents, on the assumption that frequently co-cited works are related.

• Co-word analysisBibliometrics

  Co-word analysis examines how often keywords appear together in documents to map the conceptual structure and themes of a field.

• Cohort studyResearch Methods

  A cohort study follows a group of people over time to compare the incidence of outcomes between those exposed and not exposed to a factor.

• Commercial determinants of healthPublic Health and Policy

  Commercial determinants of health are the strategies and approaches used by the private sector to promote products and choices that affect health.

• Common method biasResearch Methods

  Common method bias is variance attributable to the measurement method rather than to the constructs, which can inflate or deflate observed relationships.

• Compression of morbidityAgeing and Chronic Care

  Compression of morbidity is the hypothesis that the onset of chronic illness and disability can be postponed more than the age of death, so that the period of life lived in poor health shrinks.

• Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA)Research Methods

  Confirmatory factor analysis tests whether a hypothesised measurement model, linking observed indicators to latent factors, fits the data.

• ConfoundingResearch Methods

  Confounding occurs when a third variable associated with both exposure and outcome distorts the observed relationship between them.

• Construct validityResearch Methods

  Construct validity is the degree to which a measure actually captures the theoretical construct it is intended to measure.

• Content validityResearch Methods

  Content validity is the degree to which the content of an instrument adequately reflects the construct being measured.

• Continuous quality improvementQuality Management

  Continuous quality improvement (CQI) is an ongoing, structured approach in which organisations repeatedly measure performance and make incremental changes to improve care.

• Cost-effectiveness analysisHealth Economics

  Cost-effectiveness analysis compares the costs and health effects of alternative interventions, usually expressed as an incremental cost per unit of health gained.

• Cronbach’s alphaResearch Methods

  Cronbach's alpha is a coefficient of internal consistency that estimates how closely a set of items measures a single construct.

• Cross-sectional studyResearch Methods

  A cross-sectional study measures exposures and outcomes at a single point in time in a defined population.

• CybersecurityDigital Health and AI

  Cybersecurity in health care is the protection of information systems, connected devices and data against unauthorised access, disruption and attack.

D

• Data governanceDigital Health and AI

  Data governance is the framework of roles, rules and processes that determines how data are collected, stored, accessed, shared and protected within an organisation or health system.

• Delphi methodResearch Methods

  The Delphi method is a structured process for reaching expert consensus through repeated anonymous questionnaire rounds with controlled feedback.

• Diagnostic errorPatient Safety

  A diagnostic error is a missed, delayed or wrong diagnosis, or a failure to communicate a diagnosis to the patient.

• Diffused leadershipWorkforce and Leadership

  Diffused leadership is an approach that recognises leadership as spread across multiple people, teams and organisational levels rather than concentrated in a single position.

• Digital divideDigital Health and AI

  The digital divide refers to unequal access to digital technologies and to the skills and conditions needed to use them, which can translate into unequal access to digital health services.

• Digital health literacyDigital Health and AI

  Digital health literacy is the ability to find, understand, evaluate and use health information and services from digital sources to make health decisions.

• Digital transformationDigital Health and AI

  Digital transformation is the organisation-wide change in processes, services, culture and business models that follows the adoption of digital technologies.

• Digital twinDigital Health and AI

  A digital twin is a dynamic virtual model of a physical object, process or person that is updated with real data and used to simulate, monitor and optimise the real counterpart.

• Directed acyclic graph (DAG)Research Methods

  A directed acyclic graph is a causal diagram in which arrows represent assumed causal effects and no path returns to its starting point.

• Disability-adjusted life year (DALY)Health Economics

  A disability-adjusted life year is a measure of disease burden that sums years of life lost to premature death and years lived with disability.

• Disaster preparednessPublic Health and Policy

  Disaster preparedness is the capacity of health organisations and communities to plan for, respond to and recover from disasters such as earthquakes and floods.

• Discrete-event simulationHospital Operations

  Discrete-event simulation models a system as a sequence of events over time, such as arrivals, treatments and discharges, to test how changes affect performance.

• Distributed leadershipWorkforce and Leadership

  Distributed leadership views leadership as a collective activity spread across multiple people and roles rather than concentrated in a single formal leader.

• Donabedian modelQuality Management

  The Donabedian model evaluates quality of care through three linked dimensions: structure, process and outcome.

• Dynamic capabilitiesWorkforce and Leadership

  Dynamic capabilities are an organisation's abilities to integrate, build and reconfigure internal and external competences to respond to rapidly changing environments.

E

• Effect sizeResearch Methods

  An effect size is a quantitative measure of the magnitude of a relationship or difference, independent of sample size.

• Electronic health record (EHR)Digital Health and AI

  An electronic health record is a digital, longitudinal record of a patient's health information that can be shared across providers and used for care, management and research.

• Emergency department crowdingHospital Operations

  Emergency department crowding occurs when the demand for emergency services exceeds the department's ability to provide timely care.

• Evidence gap mapResearch Methods

  An evidence gap map is a visual tool that displays the available evidence for a set of interventions and outcomes, highlighting where evidence is plentiful and where gaps exist.

• Evidence-based managementQuality Management

  Evidence-based management is the practice of making managerial decisions by combining the best available research evidence with organisational data, professional expertise and stakeholder values.

• Evidence-based medicineQuality Management

  Evidence-based medicine is the conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best evidence, integrated with clinical expertise and patient values, in decisions about individual patients.

• Exploratory factor analysis (EFA)Research Methods

  Exploratory factor analysis identifies the underlying factor structure of a set of observed variables without specifying the structure in advance.

F

• Failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA)Patient Safety

  Failure mode and effects analysis is a prospective risk assessment method that identifies how a process could fail, the effects of each failure and priorities for prevention.

• ForecastingHospital Operations

  Forecasting is the estimation of future values, such as demand, admissions or disease burden, from historical data and models.

• FrailtyAgeing and Chronic Care

  Frailty is a state of increased vulnerability to stressors due to age-related decline in physiological reserve across multiple systems.

• Fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA)Research Methods

  fsQCA is a set-theoretic method that identifies combinations of conditions that are sufficient or necessary for an outcome, allowing for equifinality and asymmetry.

G

• GatekeepingPublic Health and Policy

  Gatekeeping is an arrangement in which primary care providers control patients' access to specialist and hospital care through referral.

• Gioia methodologyResearch Methods

  The Gioia methodology is a systematic approach to inductive qualitative research that moves from informant-centric first-order concepts to researcher-centric second-order themes and aggregate dimensions.

• Global healthPublic Health and Policy

  Global health is an area of study, research and practice that prioritises improving health and achieving equity for all people worldwide, with attention to transnational issues.

• Global Trigger ToolPatient Safety

  The Global Trigger Tool is a structured method for detecting adverse events by reviewing samples of patient records for predefined clues, or triggers, that suggest harm may have occurred.

• GRADE approachResearch Methods

  GRADE is a system for rating the certainty of evidence and the strength of recommendations in systematic reviews and guidelines.

• Grounded theoryResearch Methods

  Grounded theory is a qualitative methodology for generating theory inductively from data through constant comparison and theoretical sampling.

H

• h-indexBibliometrics

  The h-index is a bibliometric indicator: a researcher has index h if h of their papers have each been cited at least h times.

• Health belief modelPublic Health and Policy

  The health belief model explains health behaviour through perceived susceptibility, perceived severity, perceived benefits, perceived barriers, cues to action and self-efficacy.

• Health equityPublic Health and Policy

  Health equity means that everyone has a fair and just opportunity to be as healthy as possible, which requires removing obstacles such as poverty and discrimination.

• Health financingHealth Economics

  Health financing is the function of a health system concerned with raising revenue, pooling funds and purchasing services in ways that support coverage, efficiency and financial protection.

• Health geographyHealth Sociology

  Health geography studies how place, space and environment shape health, disease and access to care.

• Health inequalitiesPublic Health and Policy

  Health inequalities are systematic, avoidable and unfair differences in health between groups defined by social, economic, demographic or geographic factors.

• Health information systemDigital Health and AI

  A health information system collects, processes, analyses and reports data needed for planning, managing and evaluating health services, from patient records to national statistics.

• Health insuranceHealth Economics

  Health insurance is a mechanism that pools financial risk across people so that the cost of care for the sick is shared by the wider insured population.

• Health literacyPublic Health and Policy

  Health literacy is the degree to which people can access, understand, appraise and use health information and services to make decisions about their health.

• Health promotionPublic Health and Policy

  Health promotion is the process of enabling people to increase control over and improve their health, through individual, community and policy action.

• Health system performancePublic Health and Policy

  Health system performance is the degree to which a health system achieves its goals, such as better health, responsiveness, financial protection and efficiency.

• Health system resiliencePublic Health and Policy

  Health system resilience is the capacity of a health system to prepare for, absorb, adapt to and recover from shocks while maintaining core functions.

• Health technology assessment (HTA)Health Economics

  Health technology assessment is a multidisciplinary process that evaluates the clinical, economic, social and ethical consequences of health technologies to inform policy decisions.

• Health workforceWorkforce and Leadership

  The health workforce comprises all people engaged in actions whose primary intent is to protect and improve health, including clinical, public health and support staff.

• Healthcare utilizationPublic Health and Policy

  Healthcare utilization is the actual use of health services, such as visits, admissions or procedures, by individuals or populations.

• Healthcare-associated infectionPatient Safety

  A healthcare-associated infection is an infection that a patient acquires while receiving care and that was not present or incubating at admission.

• Healthy life expectancyAgeing and Chronic Care

  Healthy life expectancy is the average number of years a person can expect to live in good health, combining mortality and morbidity or disability data into one indicator.

• High reliability organization (HRO)Patient Safety

  A high reliability organization is one that operates in complex, hazardous conditions yet maintains very low rates of serious failure.

• Hospital readmissionQuality Management

  A hospital readmission is an unplanned return to hospital within a set period, commonly 30 days, after discharge.

• Human factorsPatient Safety

  Human factors (ergonomics) is the scientific discipline that studies interactions between people and other elements of a system in order to optimise wellbeing and system performance.

I

• Implementation scienceQuality Management

  Implementation science is the study of methods to promote the systematic uptake of research findings and evidence-based practices into routine care.

• Incident reporting systemPatient Safety

  An incident reporting system is a mechanism through which staff, and sometimes patients, report adverse events, near misses and unsafe conditions for analysis and learning.

• Informal careAgeing and Chronic Care

  Informal care is unpaid care provided by family members, friends or neighbours to people who need support because of illness, disability or age.

• Institutional isomorphismWorkforce and Leadership

  Institutional isomorphism is the tendency of organisations in the same field to become similar over time through coercive, mimetic and normative pressures.

• Institutional theoryWorkforce and Leadership

  Institutional theory explains organisational structures and practices as responses to social norms, rules and expectations that confer legitimacy, not only as efficient solutions.

• InteroperabilityDigital Health and AI

  Interoperability is the ability of different information systems and organisations to exchange data and use the exchanged information meaningfully.

J

• Job satisfactionWorkforce and Leadership

  Job satisfaction is the positive emotional state that results from a person's evaluation of their job and work experiences.

• Just culturePatient Safety

  Just culture is an approach to safety that distinguishes blameless human error from at-risk and reckless behaviour, so that staff can report errors without fear while accountability is preserved.

K

• Knowledge managementWorkforce and Leadership

  Knowledge management is the process of creating, sharing, storing and applying knowledge so that an organisation can learn and perform better.

L

• Large language models (LLMs)Digital Health and AI

  Large language models are AI systems trained on very large text collections to predict and generate language, which allows them to answer questions, summarise documents and draft text.

• LASSO regressionResearch Methods

  LASSO (least absolute shrinkage and selection operator) is a penalised regression method that shrinks coefficients and sets some to zero, performing variable selection.

• Lean managementQuality Management

  Lean management is an improvement approach that seeks to maximise value for the patient by identifying and removing waste in processes.

• Learning health systemQuality Management

  A learning health system is one in which data generated by everyday care are continuously analysed and turned into knowledge that improves care.

• Length of stayHospital Operations

  Length of stay is the time a patient spends in hospital from admission to discharge, a common measure of efficiency and resource use.

• LonelinessAgeing and Chronic Care

  Loneliness is the distressing feeling that one's social relationships are inadequate in quantity or quality.

• Long-term careAgeing and Chronic Care

  Long-term care is a range of health and social services that support people who need help with daily activities over an extended period because of age, illness or disability.

• Lotka’s lawBibliometrics

  Lotka's law describes author productivity: the number of authors publishing n papers is roughly proportional to 1/n², so a few authors produce many papers and most produce one.

• Low-value careQuality Management

  Low-value care is care that offers little or no benefit to patients, may cause harm, or costs more than alternatives with similar outcomes.

M

• Machine learningDigital Health and AI

  Machine learning is a branch of artificial intelligence in which algorithms learn patterns from data and use them to classify cases or predict outcomes without being explicitly programmed with decision rules.

• Measurement invarianceResearch Methods

  Measurement invariance means that an instrument measures the same construct in the same way across groups or time, so that comparisons are meaningful.

• Mediation analysisResearch Methods

  Mediation analysis tests whether the effect of an independent variable on an outcome is transmitted through an intermediate variable, the mediator.

• Medical errorPatient Safety

  A medical error is a failure of a planned action to be completed as intended or the use of a wrong plan to achieve an aim in health care.

• MedicalizationHealth Sociology

  Medicalization is the process by which non-medical problems become defined and treated as medical problems, usually as illnesses or disorders.

• Medication errorPatient Safety

  A medication error is any preventable event in prescribing, transcribing, dispensing, administering or monitoring a medicine that may lead to inappropriate use or patient harm.

• Meta-analysisResearch Methods

  Meta-analysis is a statistical method that combines results from multiple studies to estimate an overall effect and explore heterogeneity.

• Middle-range theoryResearch Methods

  Middle-range theory is theory that lies between minor working hypotheses and all-embracing grand theories, focused on specific phenomena and testable with data.

• Missed nursing careWorkforce and Leadership

  Missed nursing care is any aspect of required patient care that is omitted, in part or in whole, or significantly delayed.

• Mixed methods researchResearch Methods

  Mixed methods research combines quantitative and qualitative data and analysis within one study or programme to answer questions that neither approach can address alone.

• Mobile health (mHealth)Digital Health and AI

  Mobile health is the use of mobile phones, apps, wearables and other wireless devices to support health care, self-management and public health.

• Moderation analysisResearch Methods

  Moderation analysis tests whether the strength or direction of a relationship between two variables depends on a third variable, the moderator.

• Monte Carlo simulationHospital Operations

  Monte Carlo simulation uses repeated random sampling to estimate the distribution of possible outcomes in a model with uncertain inputs.

• Moral distressWorkforce and Leadership

  Moral distress is the psychological distress that arises when a professional knows the ethically appropriate action but feels unable to take it because of institutional or other constraints.

• Moral hazardHealth Economics

  Moral hazard is a change in behaviour that occurs when people are protected from the full consequences of their actions, for example using more care when insurance covers the cost.

• Multilevel modelingResearch Methods

  Multilevel modeling analyses data with a nested structure, such as patients within wards within hospitals, by estimating effects at each level.

• MultimorbidityAgeing and Chronic Care

  Multimorbidity is the coexistence of two or more chronic conditions in the same person.

N

• Near missPatient Safety

  A near miss is an incident that could have harmed a patient but did not, either by chance or because it was intercepted before reaching the patient.

• Nurse staffingWorkforce and Leadership

  Nurse staffing refers to the number, skill mix and deployment of nurses relative to patient needs.

O

• One HealthPublic Health and Policy

  One Health is an integrated approach that recognises the interdependence of human, animal and environmental health and seeks collaboration across these sectors.

• Open accessBibliometrics

  Open access is the free, immediate online availability of research outputs, combined with rights to reuse them.

• Operating room managementHospital Operations

  Operating room management is the planning, scheduling and coordination of surgical resources to deliver safe operations efficiently.

• Organizational commitmentWorkforce and Leadership

  Organizational commitment is the psychological attachment of employees to their organisation, which influences whether they stay and how much effort they invest.

• Organizational cultureWorkforce and Leadership

  Organizational culture is the pattern of shared basic assumptions, values and norms that guide how members of an organisation think, feel and behave.

• Out-of-pocket expenditureHealth Economics

  Out-of-pocket expenditure is the direct payment made by households to health providers at the time of service, not reimbursed by insurance or government.

P

• Palliative careAgeing and Chronic Care

  Palliative care is an approach that improves the quality of life of patients and families facing life-threatening illness through prevention and relief of suffering.

• Pandemic preparednessPublic Health and Policy

  Pandemic preparedness is the set of plans, capacities and resources that enable health systems and societies to detect, respond to and recover from pandemics.

• Patient empowermentHealth Sociology

  Patient empowerment is the process through which patients gain the knowledge, skills and confidence to take greater control over decisions and actions affecting their health.

• Patient experienceQuality Management

  Patient experience is the sum of patients' interactions with a health system across the continuum of care, including communication, respect, coordination, information and the physical and digital environment.

• Patient flowHospital Operations

  Patient flow is the movement of patients through a health care facility or system, from arrival to discharge, and the coordination of resources that this movement requires.

• Patient journeyHealth Sociology

  The patient journey is the sequence of experiences, interactions and care processes a patient goes through across settings and over time.

• Patient participationHealth Sociology

  Patient participation is the active involvement of patients in their own care, in safety practices and in the design of services.

• Patient safety culturePatient Safety

  Patient safety culture is the shared values, beliefs and norms in a health organisation that determine how safety is prioritised, discussed and improved.

• Patient satisfactionQuality Management

  Patient satisfaction is the patient's evaluation of whether care met their expectations, covering aspects such as communication, waiting, environment and outcomes.

• Patient-centered careHealth Sociology

  Patient-centered care is care that is respectful of and responsive to individual patient preferences, needs and values, and ensures that patient values guide clinical decisions.

• Patient-reported experience measures (PREMs)Quality Management

  Patient-reported experience measures ask patients about what happened during their care, for example whether they received information or were involved in decisions.

• Patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs)Quality Management

  Patient-reported outcome measures are standardised questionnaires that capture patients' own reports of their health status, symptoms, function and quality of life.

• Pay for performanceQuality Management

  Pay for performance (P4P) is a payment approach that rewards providers for achieving predefined quality or efficiency targets.

• PDSA cycleQuality Management

  The Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycle is an iterative method for testing a change on a small scale, learning from the results and refining the change before wider adoption.

• Peer reviewBibliometrics

  Peer review is the evaluation of research by experts in the same field before publication or funding, intended to assess quality, validity and relevance.

• Planetary healthPublic Health and Policy

  Planetary health is a field focused on the health of human civilisation and the state of the natural systems on which it depends.

• PLS-SEMResearch Methods

  Partial least squares structural equation modeling is a variance-based SEM method that maximises explained variance in endogenous constructs and is suited to prediction-oriented and complex models.

• PolypharmacyAgeing and Chronic Care

  Polypharmacy is the concurrent use of multiple medicines by one person, commonly defined as five or more, which raises the risk of interactions and adverse drug events.

• Predatory journalsBibliometrics

  Predatory journals are publications that charge authors fees while providing little or no genuine peer review or editorial service.

• Predictive qualityQuality Management

  Predictive quality is the use of data and predictive models to anticipate quality and safety problems before they occur, so that action can be taken in advance.

• Primary health carePublic Health and Policy

  Primary health care is first-contact, continuous, comprehensive and coordinated care that addresses most of a population's health needs close to where people live.

• PRISMAResearch Methods

  PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) is a reporting guideline that specifies what systematic reviews should report, including a flow diagram of study selection.

• Propensity scoreResearch Methods

  A propensity score is the probability that a person receives a treatment given observed covariates, used to balance groups in observational studies.

• Psychological safetyWorkforce and Leadership

  Psychological safety is a shared belief within a team that it is safe to take interpersonal risks, such as speaking up, asking questions or admitting mistakes.

Q

• Qualitative researchResearch Methods

  Qualitative research studies meanings, experiences and social processes through non-numerical data such as interviews, observations and documents.

• Quality improvementQuality Management

  Quality improvement is the systematic, data-driven effort of health professionals and organisations to change care processes so that outcomes, safety, efficiency and patient experience get better.

• Quality indicatorQuality Management

  A quality indicator is a measurable element of care, defined in terms of structure, process or outcome, that is used to assess and compare quality.

• Quality-adjusted life year (QALY)Health Economics

  A quality-adjusted life year is a measure of health outcome that combines length of life with health-related quality of life, where one QALY equals one year in perfect health.

R

• Random forestResearch Methods

  A random forest is a machine learning method that builds many decision trees on random subsets of data and variables and combines their predictions.

• Randomized controlled trial (RCT)Research Methods

  A randomized controlled trial assigns participants at random to intervention and control groups so that differences in outcomes can be attributed to the intervention.

• ReliabilityResearch Methods

  Reliability is the degree to which a measurement produces consistent results across items, occasions or raters.

• Resilience engineeringPatient Safety

  Resilience engineering studies how systems anticipate, monitor, respond to and learn from changing conditions so that they keep functioning under expected and unexpected demands.

• Risk of biasResearch Methods

  Risk of bias is the likelihood that features of a study's design or conduct lead to systematic error in its results.

• Root cause analysis (RCA)Patient Safety

  Root cause analysis is a structured retrospective method for identifying the underlying system factors that contributed to an incident, so that recurrence can be prevented.

S

• Safety-IIPatient Safety

  Safety-II defines safety as the ability to succeed under varying conditions, focusing on why things usually go right rather than only on why they occasionally go wrong.

• Sample size and statistical powerResearch Methods

  Sample size planning determines how many participants are needed to detect an effect of a given size with acceptable probability (statistical power).

• Science mappingBibliometrics

  Science mapping uses bibliographic networks to visualise the intellectual, conceptual and social structure of a research field and its evolution.

• Scoping reviewResearch Methods

  A scoping review maps the extent, range and nature of evidence on a topic, often to clarify concepts or identify gaps, without necessarily appraising study quality.

• Second victimPatient Safety

  A second victim is a health care professional who is emotionally harmed after being involved in an unanticipated adverse patient event or error.

• SERVQUALQuality Management

  SERVQUAL is a multi-item scale that measures service quality as the gap between customers' expectations and perceptions across five dimensions: tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy.

• Shared decision-makingHealth Sociology

  Shared decision-making is a process in which clinicians and patients make health decisions together, combining the best evidence with the patient's values and preferences.

• Sick roleHealth Sociology

  The sick role is a sociological concept describing the rights and obligations of a person who is recognised as ill.

• Six SigmaQuality Management

  Six Sigma is a data-driven improvement methodology that aims to reduce variation and defects in processes, typically using the DMAIC cycle: define, measure, analyse, improve and control.

• Social capitalHealth Sociology

  Social capital is the resources embedded in social networks, such as trust, norms of reciprocity and connections, that facilitate collective action.

• Social controlHealth Sociology

  In health sociology, social control refers to the ways medicine defines, monitors and manages behaviour considered deviant or undesirable.

• Social determinants of healthPublic Health and Policy

  Social determinants of health are the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age, and the wider forces that shape these conditions.

• STAMP and STPAPatient Safety

  STAMP (Systems-Theoretic Accident Model and Processes) treats accidents as failures of control in a complex system, and STPA (System-Theoretic Process Analysis) is the hazard analysis method derived from it.

• Statistical process controlQuality Management

  Statistical process control (SPC) uses run charts and control charts to distinguish common-cause variation, inherent in a stable process, from special-cause variation that signals a real change.

• StigmaHealth Sociology

  Stigma is a process of labelling, stereotyping, separation, status loss and discrimination that occurs when power allows these components to unfold.

• Structural equation modeling (SEM)Research Methods

  Structural equation modeling is a family of statistical methods that estimates relationships among latent constructs and their indicators within a single model.

• Surgical safety checklistPatient Safety

  The surgical safety checklist is a structured tool, promoted by WHO, that teams use at key moments of an operation to confirm critical safety steps and improve communication.

• Survival analysisResearch Methods

  Survival analysis is a set of methods for analysing time until an event, such as death, discharge or readmission, while handling censored observations.

• Sustainable healthcarePublic Health and Policy

  Sustainable healthcare delivers high-quality care while reducing environmental impact, especially carbon emissions and waste, and maintaining social and economic sustainability.

• Swiss cheese modelPatient Safety

  The Swiss cheese model describes accidents as the result of holes in several layers of defence lining up, so that a hazard passes through all barriers and causes harm.

• Systematic reviewResearch Methods

  A systematic review is a review of a clearly formulated question that uses systematic and explicit methods to identify, select, appraise and synthesise relevant research.

T

• Technology acceptance model (TAM)Digital Health and AI

  The technology acceptance model explains people's intention to use a technology mainly by its perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use.

• TelehealthDigital Health and AI

  Telehealth is the delivery of health services, education and information at a distance through telecommunications, including video consultations, remote monitoring and messaging.

• Thematic analysisResearch Methods

  Thematic analysis is a qualitative method for identifying, analysing and reporting patterns of meaning (themes) across a data set.

• Theory buildingResearch Methods

  Theory building is the process of developing explanations of why and how phenomena occur, specifying constructs, relationships, mechanisms and boundary conditions.

• Total quality management (TQM)Quality Management

  Total quality management is an organisation-wide philosophy that pursues continuous improvement of processes, products and services through customer focus, employee involvement and data-based decisions.

• Transformational leadershipWorkforce and Leadership

  Transformational leadership is a style in which leaders inspire followers through a shared vision, intellectual stimulation, individual consideration and role modelling.

• Turnover intentionWorkforce and Leadership

  Turnover intention is an employee's conscious plan or willingness to leave their organisation or profession within a certain period.

U

• Universal health coverage (UHC)Public Health and Policy

  Universal health coverage means that all people can use the quality health services they need without suffering financial hardship.

• Unmet healthcare needPublic Health and Policy

  Unmet healthcare need is the gap between the care a person needs and the care they receive, whether because of cost, distance, waiting, information or other barriers.

• UTAUTDigital Health and AI

  The Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) explains technology adoption through performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence and facilitating conditions.

V

• ValidityResearch Methods

  Validity is the degree to which evidence and theory support the interpretation of scores for their intended use.

• Value-based healthcareQuality Management

  Value-based healthcare organises care around achieving the best health outcomes that matter to patients relative to the cost of achieving them.

W

• Waiting timeHospital Operations

  Waiting time is the interval between the point at which a patient needs or requests care and the point at which care is received.

• Willingness to payHealth Economics

  Willingness to pay is the maximum amount a person or society is prepared to pay for a good, service or health gain.

• Work engagementWorkforce and Leadership

  Work engagement is a positive, fulfilling work-related state of mind characterised by vigour, dedication and absorption.

Suggested citation: Kurutkan, M. N. (2026). Health management glossary. The Health Topics. https://healthtopic.org/glossary/