Heart Rate

clinical

Updated 5/16/2026

Definition

A clinical vital sign representing the number of cardiac cycles per minute, recorded in EHR systems as a discrete numeric observation using LOINC code 8867-4. Heart rate values are ingested into clinical data warehouses from monitoring devices, nursing flowsheets, and ambulatory visit records for use in risk stratification and population health analytics.

Standard Abbreviation

Database Usage

-- Example column naming
CREATE TABLE claims (
  clm_id VARCHAR(50),
  hr INTEGER,  -- Heart Rate (count/integer value)
  ...
);

-- Example in SELECT
SELECT
  clm_id,
  hr as heart_rate
FROM claims;

Common uses in healthcare data

Risk stratification and population health analytics
CMS-HCC risk adjustment and RAF score calculation
Quality measure attribution and HEDIS reporting
Clinical data warehouse schema design
Value-based care contract performance tracking

Example database column name

ISO-11179 snake_case standard

-- Recommended column name
hr

-- Example DDL
CREATE TABLE healthcare_data (
  record_id   VARCHAR(50)   NOT NULL,
  hr           INTEGER,  -- Heart Rate (count/integer value)
  created_dt  TIMESTAMP     NOT NULL DEFAULT NOW()
);

Column names follow the ISO-11179 naming convention: lowercase, underscore-separated, using the standard abbreviation as a prefix where applicable.

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