Dictionary
The Dictionary provides concise definitions of health economics terms, arranged alphabetically for quick reference. Use it to understand unfamiliar terminology or confirm the meaning of a specific term.
D
- Denial Management
- The processes an organisation uses to identify, appeal, and prevent insurance claim denials, minimising revenue loss and administrative burden.
- Departure Process
- The pattern by which entities, such as patients, leave a discrete event simulation after completing the services or processes being modelled.
- Dependent Censoring
- A survival analysis situation in which the reason for censoring is related to a participant's underlying risk of the event, violating standard assumptions.
- Diabetes Economics
- The application of health economic evaluation to diabetes prevention, diagnosis, and management, spanning medication, monitoring technology, and complication prevention.
- Diagnostic Safety
- A patient safety dimension concerned specifically with preventing errors in diagnosis, such as missed, delayed, or incorrect diagnoses.
- Digital Therapeutic
- A digital health product delivering a medical intervention directly to patients using evidence-based, clinically evaluated software, to prevent, manage, or treat disease.
- Diminishing Returns
- A principle that, holding other inputs constant, each extra unit of a given input eventually yields a smaller increase in output than the last.
- Disease Pathway
- The sequence of clinical states and events patients with a given condition typically experience over time, from diagnosis through outcome.
- Disruptive Innovation
- An innovation creating a new market by initially serving an overlooked segment with a simpler or cheaper offering, eventually displacing established competitors.
- Dose-Limiting Toxicity
- A sufficiently severe adverse event in early-phase trials that prevents further dose escalation, used to help determine the maximum tolerated dose.
- Dropout
- The premature discontinuation of a study participant's involvement before planned completion, whether from withdrawn consent, adverse events, or lost contact.
E
- Entity Definition
- The specification of the individual units, such as patients, that flow through and interact with a discrete event simulation.
- Equipment Management
- The processes an organisation uses to acquire, maintain, and appropriately use its medical equipment, including preventive maintenance and inventory tracking.
- Ex Ante Moral Hazard
- A change in behaviour occurring before a loss event because of insurance coverage, such as reduced investment in preventive health behaviours.
- Ex Post Moral Hazard
- An increase in healthcare utilisation occurring after an insured event because insurance reduces the marginal price the patient faces for care.
- Excludability
- A characteristic of a good describing whether it is possible to prevent those who have not paid for it from consuming it.
- Expected Value
- The probability-weighted average of all possible outcomes of an uncertain event, found by multiplying each outcome by its probability and summing.
- Exponential Distribution
- A probability distribution characterised by a constant hazard rate over time, used to model event timing when risk is assumed not to change.
- Exponential Model
- A survival model assuming time-to-event data follow an exponential distribution, implying a constant hazard rate throughout the modelled time horizon.
F
- Failure Mode Analysis
- A systematic, proactive method identifying potential ways a process might fail before failures occur, allowing preventive rather than reactive action.
- Failure Mode Effects Analysis
- A structured method proactively identifying and evaluating potential failure modes, along with their likely severity and detectability, to prioritise preventive action.
- Falls Rate
- A measure of how frequently hospitalised patients experience a fall within a facility, a key patient safety and prevention indicator.
- Fee Freeze
- A regulatory or contractual action preventing fee schedule rates from increasing for a specified period, a cost-containment mechanism.
- Feedback Loop
- A causal pathway in which a change in one variable eventually leads, through other variables, back to a change in itself.
- Fleming-Harrington Estimator
- A statistical technique for estimating the survival function from censored data, more flexible than the Kaplan-Meier estimator in weighting events over time.
- Fleming-Harrington Test
- A hypothesis test comparing survival distributions between groups, generalising the log-rank test by allowing different weights for events at different follow-up times.
- Functional Decline
- A reduction in ability to perform daily activities independently, often linked to ageing, chronic disease progression, or an acute health event.
- Fundamental Risk Evaluation
- A risk evaluation limited to the most basic estimate of an event's probability, without more elaborate modelling of contributing factors.
G
- Gamma Distribution
- A flexible probability distribution capable of representing increasing, decreasing, or constant hazard patterns, commonly used for time-to-event and cost data.
- Gamma Model
- A survival model assuming time-to-event data follow a gamma distribution, allowing hazard rates that increase, decrease, or stay constant over time.
- Genetic Screening
- The systematic testing of individuals or populations for genetic variants associated with disease risk, to identify who may benefit from targeted prevention or treatment.
- Global Health Security
- The collective capacity of the international community to prevent, detect, and respond to acute public health threats crossing national borders.
- Global Trigger Tool
- A structured methodology retrospectively reviewing records for indicators suggesting a possible adverse event, more comprehensively estimating true harm rates than voluntary reporting.
- Good Catch
- An informal term for an instance where a healthcare worker identifies and prevents a potential error from reaching a patient.
H
- Half-Cycle CorrectionHCC
- An adjustment in Markov model based evaluations accounting for events occurring, on average, mid-cycle rather than precisely at its start or end.
- Harrell C-Index
- A survival model discrimination measure generalising the ROC area under curve to time-to-event data, the probability the model ranks patients correctly.
- Hazard Function
- A function describing the instantaneous risk of an event at a given point in time, conditional on having survived to that point.
- Hazard Rate
- The instantaneous probability of an event at a specific point in time, given survival without the event up to then, on a continuous scale.
- Hazard RatioHR
- A measure comparing the instantaneous risk of an event in one group relative to another, commonly estimated using a Cox model.
- Hazard-to-Probability Conversion
- The mathematical transformation converting an instantaneous hazard rate into the probability of an event occurring over a specific discrete time interval.
- Health Behaviour
- An action or pattern of action that affects an individual's health, healthcare use or response to prevention and treatment.
- Health Technology
- A broad term covering any intervention used to promote health, prevent or treat disease, or improve rehabilitation and long-term care.
- Healthcare Infection Economics
- The application of health economic evaluation to infections acquired in healthcare settings, covering both prevention programmes and treatment once they occur.
- Healthcare-Associated Infection
- An infection a patient develops during care in a healthcare facility, not present or incubating at admission, largely preventable.
- HIV Economics
- The application of health economic evaluation to HIV infection, covering prevention, testing, and lifelong antiretroviral treatment.
- Hospital-Acquired Condition
- A condition or complication a patient acquires during a hospital stay not present on admission, considered reasonably preventable through evidence-based practices.
- Hospital-Acquired Infection
- An infection a patient develops during care in a healthcare facility, not present or incubating at admission, a largely preventable cost.
- Hypertension Economics
- The application of health economic evaluation to high blood pressure, comparing medication classes and combinations for cost-effectiveness in cutting cardiovascular events.
I
- Individual Mandate
- A legal requirement that individuals maintain a minimum level of insurance coverage or face a financial penalty, to prevent adverse selection.
- Infection Control Economics
- The application of health economic evaluation to preventing infection transmission in healthcare settings, covering hand hygiene, isolation, and environmental cleaning.