What is the difference between efficiency and productivity, or between value and quality, indeed what do we mean by the word value, a term that is widely used? Even when people are clear in their meaning of a term, their meaning is usually different from the meanings others associate with the same term.
It is impossible to manage an organization when there is no common language; equally difficult if the meaning keeps changing. New terms are introduced with each re-organisation but these terms such as “GP consortium”, usually have a clearly defined new meaning. It is when a term is so widely used that everyone thinks they know what it means that confusion arises. Because different professions will be using these terms, a common set of terms and a common set of concepts is essential.
The Right Care Glossary of Commissioning, at the very least,
provides a source of definitions and examples of the way in which
terms that are commonly employed and used. The Glossary, in paper
and online, contains all the key terms used in value improvement,
variation analysis, programme budgeting, marginal analysis, systems,
networks and pathways.
The Glossary will also have short essays on terms for which there is not a single easy example of its meaning or where the definition requires amplification, for example terms such as “rule of rescue”.