Acute Care is short-term medical treatment, most often in a hospital, for people who have a severe illness or injury, or are recovering from surgery.

Admission or Hospital Admissions is the process of being admitted to a hospital as a patient. The rate and quality of this process may be a good indicator of the local health system's performance and the effectiveness of health plans in managing care.

AHRQ is the lead Federal agency charged with improving the quality, safety, efficiency, and effectiveness of health care for all Americans.  As one of 12 agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services, AHRQ sponsors and conducts research that provides evidence-based information on health care outcomes, quality, and cost, use, and access.  Such information helps health care decision-makers – patients and clinicians, health system leaders, purchasers, and policymakers – make more informed decisions and improve the quality of health care services.

Aligning Forces for Quality (AF4Q) is a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) designed to help communities across the country improve the quality of health care for patients with chronic conditions such as diabetes, asthma, depression and heart disease. The premise of AF4Q is that no single person, group or profession can improve the quality of care without the support of others. AF4Q seeks to drive quality improvement by aligning key forces, including health care providers (physicians/physician groups, nurses, clinics), health care purchasers (employers and insurers) and health care consumers (patients).

Ambulatory Care is medical care provided on an outpatient basis—therefore, not requiring a person to be admitted to the hospital. Ambulatory Care is provided in physicians' offices, clinics, emergency departments, outpatient surgery centers and hospital settings that do not involve a patient staying overnight.

America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) is the national association representing nearly 1,300 member companies providing health insurance coverage to more than 200 million Americans. Member companies offer medical-expense insurance, long-term care insurance, disability-income insurance, dental insurance, supplemental insurance, stop-loss insurance and reinsurance to consumers, employers and public purchasers. AHIP's goal is to provide a unified voice for the health care financing industry; to expand access to high-quality, cost-effective health care to all Americans; and to ensure Americans' financial security through robust insurance markets, product flexibility and innovation, and an abundance of consumer choice.

The American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) is one of the largest national medical organizations, representing more than 94,000 family physicians, family medicine residents and medical students nationwide. Founded in 1947, its mission is to preserve and promote the science and art of family medicine and to ensure high-quality, cost-effective health care for patients of all ages.

The American Health Quality Association (AHQA) is an educational, nonprofit national membership association dedicated to promoting and facilitating fundamental change that improves the quality of health care in America. AHQA represents Quality Improvement Organizations (QIOs) and professionals, sharing information about best practices with physicians, hospitals and nursing homes. Working together with health care providers, QIOs identify opportunities and provide assistance for improvement.

The American Hospital Association (AHA) is a national organization, founded in 1898, that represents and serves all types of hospitals, health care networks, and their patients and communities. The AHA provides education for health care leaders and is a source of information on health care issues and trends. Through representation and advocacy activities, the AHA ensures that members' perspectives and needs are heard and addressed in national health policy development, legislative and regulatory debates, and judicial matters. Our advocacy efforts include the legislative and executive branches and include the legislative and regulatory arenas. Nearly 5,000 hospitals, health care systems, networks, other providers of care and 37,000 individual members come together to form the AHA.

The American Medical Association (AMA) helps doctors help patients by uniting physicians nationwide to work on the most important professional and public health issues. The AMA seeks to promote the art and science of medicine and the betterment of public health.

The American Nurses Association (ANA) is the only full-service professional organization representing the nation's 2.9-million registered nurses (RNs) through its 54-constituent member associations. The ANA advances the nursing profession by fostering high standards of nursing practice, promoting the rights of nurses in the workplace, projecting a positive and realistic view of nursing, and by lobbying the Congress and regulatory agencies on health care issues affecting nurses and the public.

Anecdotal evidence is information that comes from any collection of stories of what has happened with other patients and is sometimes used by both the public or the professional community to prove or disprove something.  Although anecdotal evidence sounds plausible, it is not systematic, representative or unbiased.  Therefore, anecdotal evidence may not reflect what will happen in general.  It cannot be used as the basis for proving anything scientific.