Glossary

Plain-English definitions of the terms used in U.S. hospital cost reporting, Medicare payment, and nonprofit community- benefit reporting. Each entry links to the relevant data elsewhere on the site.

• HCRIS
  Healthcare Cost Report Information System · CMS Form 2552-10
  CMS's authoritative collection of annual financial and statistical filings from every Medicare-certified hospital.
• MS-DRG
  Medicare Severity Diagnosis-Related Group · DRG
  The classification code that determines how Medicare pays a hospital for a specific inpatient stay.
• IRS Form 990 Schedule H
  Schedule H · Community Benefit Report
  The annual community benefit report nonprofit hospitals must file with the IRS to keep their tax-exempt status.
• IRS Form 990 Schedule J
  Schedule J · Officer Compensation
  The IRS form section that lists individual officers, directors, and key employees of a nonprofit and how much they were paid.
• Worksheet S-3
  W/S S-3 · Hospital Statistical Data
  The HCRIS worksheet that reports a hospital's operational statistics — beds, discharges, inpatient days by payer.
• Worksheet G-3
  W/S G-3 · Statement of Revenues and Expenses
  The HCRIS worksheet that captures a hospital's income statement: revenue, expenses, net income.
• Worksheet G
  W/S G · Balance Sheet
  The HCRIS worksheet that captures a hospital's balance sheet: assets, liabilities, fund balance.
• Worksheet S-10
  W/S S-10 · Uncompensated Care Data
  The HCRIS worksheet capturing charity care, bad debt, and total uncompensated care cost.
• CCN
  CMS Certification Number · Medicare Provider Number
  The six-digit identifier CMS assigns to every Medicare-participating provider. The primary key of the U.S. hospital data world.
• NPI
  National Provider Identifier
  The 10-digit federal identifier every healthcare provider uses to bill, prescribe, and report — issued by CMS via NPPES.
• IPPS
  Inpatient Prospective Payment System
  Medicare's method of paying acute-care hospitals — a fixed payment per stay based on MS-DRG.
• DSH
  Disproportionate Share Hospital · DSH Adjustment
  A Medicare payment adjustment for hospitals serving disproportionately high shares of low-income patients.
• Critical Access Hospital
  CAH · Critical Access
  A small rural hospital designation that receives cost-based Medicare reimbursement instead of IPPS — required to be ≤25 beds and >35 miles from another hospital.
• Uncompensated Care
  The total cost of care a hospital provides without receiving payment — charity care plus bad debt, less any subsidies received.
• Charity Care
  Hospital care provided free or at reduced cost to patients who can't afford it, per the hospital's financial assistance policy.
• Operating Margin
  A hospital's profit margin from patient services — net operating income divided by total operating revenue.
• Net Patient Revenue
  Gross patient charges minus contractual allowances and discounts — what a hospital actually expects to collect from patient services.
• HSAF
  Hospital Service Area File
  CMS's annual snapshot of where each hospital's patients come from — Medicare claims aggregated to ZIP-of-origin × hospital CCN.
• LTCH
  Long-Term Care Hospital
  An acute-care hospital that specializes in patients needing >25 days of inpatient stay — chronic ventilator weaning, complex wound care, multi-organ failure.
• IRF
  Inpatient Rehabilitation Facility
  A hospital specializing in intensive rehabilitation — stroke, spinal cord injury, traumatic brain injury, joint replacement recovery.
• ASC
  Ambulatory Surgery Center · Surgicenter
  A freestanding facility specializing in same-day surgical procedures — cataracts, endoscopies, joint scopes, dermatology procedures.
• GME
  Graduate Medical Education
  Medicare's funding for residency training — pays teaching hospitals for the cost of training physicians.
• IME
  Indirect Medical Education · IME Adjustment
  An adjustment to Medicare IPPS payments that compensates teaching hospitals for the higher per-discharge costs of training residents.