ASC - Ambulatory Surgical Center: Outpatient center that provides surgical procedures that do not require an overnight stay.

DGME - Direct Graduate Medical Education payments: The payments hospitals receive from Medicare/Medicaid based on the amount of medical school graduates being trained.

HCC - Hierarchical Condition Category Coding: Medicare has classified thousands of the ICD diagnosis codes in HCCs or categories designating chronic conditions that end up costing them more money over the long run, such as diabetes, kidney failure, old MI, etc. When patients are assigned these ICD codes, Medicare sees those beneficiaries as being more severely ill than the "average" Medicare beneficiary. For certain Medicare members, this could result in higher reimbursement.

IRB - Institutional Review Board: An independent body constituted of medical/scientific professionals and non-medical/non-scientific members, whose responsibility it is to ensure the protection of the rights, safety, and well-being of human subjects involved in a trial and to provide public assurance of that protection by, among other things, reviewing and approving/providing favorable opinion on the trial protocol, the suitability of the investigator(s), facilities, and the methods and material to be used in obtaining and documenting informed consent of the trial subjects.

HCQIA - Health Care Quality Improvement Act: Passed by Congress in 1986, this legislation provides healthcare organizations and their peer review bodies immunity from monetary damages as a result of "adverse professional review actions" that relate to the competence or professional conduct of an affected physician or dentist. The act has established standards for due process when restricting or terminating a physician's privileges. It does not prevent other types of legal action (e.g. injunctions or restraining orders) and it does not convey protection of peer review documents from discovery in legal proceedings. HCQIA also created the National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB), a system for reporting physicians whose competency has been judged inadequate.

NPDB - National Practitioner Data Bank: Established by HCQIA, this data bank serves as a clearinghouse of information for healthcare organizations throughout the nation. It has a number of reporting requirements that must be followed by healthcare entities that perform peer review.  Healthcare bodies that do not make required reports to the NPDB forfeit the peer review immunities they would otherwise be entitled to under HCQIA.