Healthcare Resources & Abbreviations

A Reference Glossary for Power BI for Healthcare Students

This glossary covers the major U.S. healthcare agencies, standards bodies, regulations, and associations that shape the kind of data you’ll work with as a healthcare analyst.

Federal Oversight Agencies

• HHS — S. Department of Health and Human Services
  • The cabinet-level parent department overseeing nearly all federal health agencies (CMS, CDC, FDA, NIH, and others sit underneath it).
  • Sets national health policy priorities; HHS.gov is a good starting point when researching where any other acronym “lives.”
• CMS — Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services
  • Runs Medicare (65+/disabled) and Medicaid (low-income) — together they pay for roughly 40% of U.S. healthcare spending.
  • Publishes huge public datasets (hospital pricing, quality star ratings, claims data) that are a favorite source for Power BI practice projects.
• CDC — Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
  • The nation’s lead public health agency: tracks disease outbreaks, vaccination rates, and chronic disease statistics.
  • A major source of public health dashboards and datasets (case counts, mortality data) used in epidemiology-style BI projects.
• FDA — Food and Drug Administration
  • Approves and regulates drugs, medical devices, and vaccines before they reach patients.
  • Maintains adverse-event and recall datasets (e.g., FAERS) sometimes used in drug-safety analytics.
• NIH — National Institutes of Health
  • The primary federal agency funding biomedical and health research (27 institutes/centers, e.g., National Cancer Institute).
  • A source of clinical trial and research datasets (ClinicalTrials.gov).
• AHA (new) — Administration for a Healthy America
  • A new operating division formed in the 2025 HHS reorganization by merging several smaller agencies, including HRSA and SAMHSA, to cut duplication.
  • Watch for acronym collision: “AHA” also refers to the American Hospital Association (see Professional & Industry Associations) — always check context.
• HRSA — Health Resources and Services Administration
  • Historically funded care for uninsured and underserved populations (community health centers, rural health).
  • As of the 2025 reorganization, its functions were absorbed into the new AHA; still useful to know when you see it referenced in older reports or datasets.
• SAMHSA — Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
  • Led federal mental health and addiction treatment policy and funding.
  • Also folded into the new AHA in the 2025 reorganization; still the name behind many existing behavioral-health datasets you’ll encounter.
• AHRQ — Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
  • Researches how to make healthcare safer, higher quality, and more affordable; produces the widely used HCUP hospital utilization data.
  • A great public dataset source for practicing hospital-operations dashboards.
• OSHA — Occupational Safety and Health Administration
  • Regulates workplace safety, including for hospital staff (needlestick injuries, PPE rules).
  • Relevant if a course example ever touches staff safety or incident tracking.
• DEA — Drug Enforcement Administration
  • Regulates controlled substances, including hospital prescribing and dispensing of opioids.
  • Comes up in pharmacy and controlled-substance compliance dashboards.

Health Data & Interoperability Standards

• ONC — Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology
  • Sets national standards for how electronic health records exchange data; its exact organizational name inside HHS has shifted a few times in recent reorganizations, but the office and its role persist.
  • The office behind certification requirements that shape what data fields EHR systems must support — relevant background for anyone modeling hospital data.
• HL7 — Health Level Seven International
  • A non-profit standards body (not a government agency) that defines how health data messages are formatted and exchanged between systems.
  • Its FHIR standard (below) is increasingly how modern hospital systems expose data to analytics tools.
• FHIR — Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources
  • A modern, API-based data standard (built by HL7) for exchanging health records between systems.
  • Understanding FHIR helps explain why real-world hospital data often looks very different from a clean CSV like the one in this course.
• NPI — National Provider Identifier
  • A unique 10-digit ID assigned to every individual doctor and healthcare organization in the U.S.
  • Acts like a real-world doctor_id — the exact kind of key your Chapter 3 data model exercise practices with.

Compliance & Regulation

• HIPAA — Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act
  • The federal law protecting patient privacy and requiring safeguards for Protected Health Information (PHI).
  • The reason this course insists on using only synthetic data — real patient data falls under HIPAA and can’t be handled casually.
• HITECH — Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act
  • A 2009 law that funded EHR adoption and strengthened HIPAA’s enforcement and breach-notification rules.
  • Explains why healthcare data breaches carry such large penalties compared to other industries.
• CLIA — Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments
  • Federal standards ensuring lab test results (bloodwork, etc.) are accurate and reliable.
  • Relevant if a project ever extends into lab or treatment result data.

Medical Coding & Billing Standards

• ICD-10-CM — International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision, Clinical Modification
  • The standard code set for diagnoses (e.g., a code for “Type 2 diabetes”).
  • In a real hospital dataset, reason_for_visit would likely be an ICD-10-CM code rather than plain text like “Checkup.”
• CPT — Current Procedural Terminology
  • The standard code set for medical procedures and services (maintained by the American Medical Association).
  • This is what a real-world treatment_type column would actually contain in billing systems.
• HCPCS — Healthcare Common Procedure Coding System
  • Codes for supplies, equipment, and services not covered by CPT (e.g., ambulance rides, durable medical equipment).
  • Rounds out the three code sets that drive real hospital billing data.

Quality & Accreditation

• TJC — The Joint Commission (formerly JCAHO)
  • The main independent body that accredits U.S. hospitals; accreditation is often required for Medicare reimbursement.
  • Publishes quality and safety metrics that make good benchmarking data for dashboard projects.
• NCQA — National Committee for Quality Assurance
  • Accredits health plans and measures healthcare quality (HEDIS measures).
  • A source of standardized quality metrics analysts often need to report against.

Professional & Industry Associations

• AMA — American Medical Association
  • The largest professional association for physicians; maintains the CPT code set mentioned above.
  • Influential in shaping billing codes and medical policy debates.
• AHA — American Hospital Association
  • A trade association representing hospitals and health systems nationally (distinct from the new government AHA above).
  • Publishes widely cited hospital statistics and benchmarking data.