Technology

A data design pattern organizing data into three progressively refined layers — bronze (raw ingested data), silver (cleaned and validated data), and gold (business-level aggregated and modeled data) — widely adopted in healthcare data platforms built on Databricks and Apache Spark. The medallion pattern enables teams to retain raw source data for auditability and reprocessing while providing clean, curated datasets for analytics, reporting, and machine learning without redundant ETL pipelines.

The systematic process of creating, maintaining, and governing metadata — data about data — across a healthcare organization data platform, including technical metadata describing schemas and data types, business metadata providing definitions and ownership, operational metadata tracking pipeline execution and data quality, and compliance metadata documenting PHI classification and retention policies. Effective metadata management is a prerequisite for data governance, self-service analytics, and regulatory compliance in healthcare data environments.

Unique surrogate key assigned by the source system to a quantified performance or clinical metric record. Supports tracking of calculated measurements used in quality reporting, contract performance evaluation, provider scorecards, and population health management analytics.

A software design pattern decomposing a large application into small, independently deployable services that each own a specific bounded domain and communicate through APIs or message queues. In healthcare data platforms, microservices architecture is applied to separate the member eligibility service, claims processing service, provider directory service, and analytics API into independently scalable components, reducing the risk that changes to one domain affect the reliability of others.

Unique surrogate key assigned by the source system to a morbidity measurement record. Used in population health, actuarial, and clinical analytics systems to track disease burden, condition prevalence, and comorbidity data that inform risk stratification and care management programs.

Unique surrogate key assigned by the source system to a mortality measurement record. Used in population health surveillance, quality reporting, and actuarial systems to track death rate data across member populations, conditions, and care settings for outcomes analysis.

Unique surrogate key assigned by the source system to a magnetic resonance imaging study record. Used in radiology information systems, prior authorization workflows, and medical claims processing to track MRI procedures across diagnostic imaging episodes and utilization management reviews.

A unique identifier that exists in the source business system and has inherent business meaning, such as a member ID, NPI number, or claim number. Used alongside surrogate keys in healthcare data warehouses to maintain traceability back to source systems. Also called a business key or source key.

Unique surrogate key assigned by the source system to a nephrology specialty care record. Enables tracking of kidney disease-related encounters, referrals, and treatment episodes across care management, claims, and chronic kidney disease quality measurement programs.

Unique surrogate key assigned by the source system to a neurology specialty care record. Supports tracking of nervous system disorder-related encounters, referrals, and treatment episodes across medical claims, care management, and specialty utilization reporting systems.

Unique surrogate key assigned by the source system to a clinical documentation note record. Used in electronic health records and care management platforms to track individual documentation entries such as progress notes, discharge summaries, and care plan narratives across patient encounters.

Unique surrogate key assigned by the source system to a licensed nursing professional record. Used in clinical staffing, care coordination, and provider credentialing systems to uniquely identify RNs, LPNs, and advanced practice nurses involved in patient care delivery and documentation.

Unique surrogate key assigned by the source system to an obstetric care record. Enables tracking of pregnancy-related encounters, prenatal visits, and delivery episodes across medical claims, care management, and maternal health quality measurement programs including prenatal care HEDIS measures.

Unique surrogate key assigned by the source system to a surgical operation record. Used in surgical scheduling, facility claims, and operative documentation systems to track individual surgical procedures across inpatient, outpatient, and ambulatory surgical center care settings.

Unique surrogate key assigned by the source system to an ophthalmology specialty care record. Supports tracking of eye care encounters, procedures, and referrals across medical claims, diabetic eye exam quality measures, and specialty utilization management systems.

Unique surrogate key assigned by the source system to a clinical order record. Used in order entry, lab, pharmacy, and radiology systems to track clinician-initiated service requests including medication orders, diagnostic tests, and referrals across the care delivery workflow.

Unique system-generated key assigned to an orthopedic specialty record, such as a musculoskeletal encounter, surgical case, or joint procedure. Used to link orthopedic clinical data across EHR, imaging, surgical scheduling, and clinical data warehouse systems for continuity of care tracking.

Unique system-generated key assigned to an otolaryngology specialty record covering ear, nose, and throat conditions or procedures. Enables consistent cross-system linkage of ENT encounters, audiological data, and surgical records across clinical and administrative healthcare platforms.

A boolean indicator showing that a standard business rule or system default was manually overridden for a specific record in a healthcare data system. Used in claims adjudication, prior authorization, and formulary management to track exceptions and manual interventions for audit compliance.

The date on which a claim payment was issued by a healthcare payer to a provider or member. Used in claims financial reporting, cash flow analysis, and remittance reconciliation. Critical field for accounts receivable aging and payment lag analysis.