Glossary

Glossary and Acronyms
Term Sort descending	Definition
NATIONAL DRUG CODE	A medical code set maintained by the Food and Drug Administration that contains codes for drugs that are FDA-approved. The Secretary of HHS adopted this code set as the standard for reporting drugs and biologics on standard transactions.
NATIONAL EMPLOYER ID	A system for uniquely identifying all sponsors of health care benefits.
NATIONAL HEALTH INFORMATION INFRASTRUCTURE	This is a healthcare-specific lane on the Information Superhighway, as described in the National Information Infrastructure (NII) initiative. Conceptually, this includes the HIPAA A/S initiatives.
NATIONAL IMPROVEMENT PROJECTS	HCQIP projects developed by a group consisting of representatives of some or all of the following groups: CMS, Public Health Service, Networks, renal provider, and consumer communities. The object is to use statistical analysis to identify better patterns of care and outcomes, and to feed the results of the analysis back into the provider community to improve the quality of care provided to renal Medicare beneficiaries. Each project will have a particular clinical focus.
NATIONAL MEDIAN CHARGE	The national median charge is the exact middle amount of the amounts charged for the same service. This means that half of the hospitals and community mental health centers charged more than this amount and the other half charged less than this amount for the same service.
NATIONAL PATIENT ID	A system for uniquely identifying all recipients of health care services. This is sometimes referred to as the National Individual Identifier (NII), or as the Healthcare ID.
NATIONAL PAYER ID	A system for uniquely identifying all organizations that pay for health care services. Also known as Health Plan ID, or Plan ID.
NATIONAL PLAN AND PROVIDER ENUMERATION SYSTEM (NPPES)	The system that uniquely identifies a health care provider (as defined at 45 CFR 160.103) and assigns it an NPI. The system is designed with the future capability to also enumerate health plans once the Secretary has adopted a standard unique health identifier for health plans.
NATIONAL PROVIDER IDENTIFIER (NPI)	The name of the standard unique health identifier for health care providers that was adopted by the Secretary in January 2004.
NATIONAL STANDARD FORMAT	Generically, this applies to any nationally standardized data format, but it is often used in a more limited way to designate the Professional EMC NSF, a 320-byte flat file record format used to submit professional claims.