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A bunch of acronyms cloud the practice management arena. Here’s the 411 to keep you up to date.

PM or MPM or even PMS

Pracice Management, Medical Practice Management or Practice Management Software. These all refer to the software needed to run your practice. Original PM solutions were built solely for billing purposes. These days a full Practice Management suite can handle patient billing, insurance claims, appointment scheduling, reporting, and staff management.

EMR/EHR

Electronic Medical/Health Records. The term Electronic Medical Record has been slowly replaced with Electronic Health Record. The terms are, for the most part, interchangeable. They refer to the electronic records of the medical history of a patient. It is the digital version of your paper-based patient charts.
Electronic Medical Records (EMR) can refer to a private practices’ records, whereas Electronic Health Records (EHR) often refer to patient data that is interchangeable across multiple health organizations. When it comes to choosing software, however, the acronyms are synonymous.

HL7, ANSI ASC X12, EDI

EDI is Electronic Data Interchange. It simply means the communication between two computers that are usually housed in different organizations.
HL7 and ANSI ASC X12 are standards that were written so that information shared between hospitals and medical organizations are talking the same language; both in a technical manner and physically (they cover everything from computer code to the layout of forms).

HIPAA

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act: Congress enacted standards for electronic health care records and transactions, with the aim of secure and private patient records and national indentifier standards for health care providers. In other words, the rules and regulations you must legally follow when handling ANY type of electronic health information or transaction.

ASP

Application Service Provider. This is another name for web-based software solutions- those Practice Management/EHR solutions that you pay a monthly fee for, and access over the internet.

HCPCS, CPT, ICD

These are all billing terms. Healthcare Common Procedure Coding System (sometimes called Hick-Picks) refers to a standardized coding system that describes items or services (and their associated fees) provided by healthcare professionals. HIPAA regulations made the use of these codes, specifically the AMA’s set of CPT codes, mandatory. Although required by law now, the Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) codes are only available by fee from the American Medical Association (AMA). If you are purchasing a new Practice Management system for your office, you will most likely encounter fees for the use of these codes within your new software.
The World Health Organization (WHO) also provides a set of codes called International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD). These codes refer to specific diseases and their related symptoms, and while used internally by hospitals and health organizations due to their thoroughness, are a statistical classification system for world health research studies.