Case work Health Dictionary

A study that starts with the identification of persons with the disease (or other outcome variable) of interest, and a suitable control (comparison, reference) group of persons without the disease. The relationship of an attribute to the disease is examined by comparing the diseased and non-diseased with regard to how frequently the attribute is present or, if quantitative, the level of the attribute, in each of the groups.... case control study

The number of fatal cases of specific disease, divided by total number of known cases and it is usually expressed as percent. Case fatality is one index of disease severity and is of more interest in acute than in chronic disease.... case fatality rate

A worker who has less than full professional qualifications in a particular field and is supervised by a professional worker.... auxiliary worker

A partic ular instance of disease; as in a case of typhoid fever. A case is not synonymous with a patient, for the latter is the human being affected with the disease.... case

A meeting of all professionals (often including carers) interested in an individual’s care.... case conference

A continuous process of planning, arranging and coordinating multiple health care services across time, place and discipline for persons with high-risk conditions or complex needs in order to ensure appropriate care and optimum quality, as well as to contain costs.... case management

A method by which a health care provider measures the service needs of the patient population. It may be based on such things as age, medical diagnosis, severity of illness or length of stay.... case mix

Fixed cost for a case. See also “fee for service”.... case payment

A measure of intensity or gravity of a given condition or diagnosis for an older person.... case severity

An in-depth study of an individual, group, institution, organization or programme. The advantage of the case study method is that it allows more intensive analyses of specific empirical details. However, it is difficult to use the results to generalize to other cases.... case study

A trained health worker who works with other health and development workers as a team. The community health worker provides the first contact between the individual and the health system. The types of community health worker vary between countries and communities according to their needs and the resources available to meet them. In many societies, these workers come from and are chosen by the community in which they work. In some countries they work as volunteers; normally those who work part-time or full-time are rewarded, in cash or in kind, by the community and the formal health services.... community health worker

A person with defined responsibility towards a specific service user, usually with responsibility for service provision and the monitoring of care. Usually the first point of contact for an individual.... key worker

An intervention designed to enhance an individual’s physical, mental and social functioning through improved coping skills and use of social supports and community health care services. Those who practise social work are generally called social workers. There are many different types, specialties and grades of social worker. Those who specialize in care of older adults are often called geriatric or gerontological social workers.... social work

The sum of the institution’s short-term or current assets, including cash, marketable (short-term) securities, accounts receivable and inventories. Net working capital is defined as the excess of total current assets over total current liabilities.... working capital

a lung disease caused by coal dust. It affects mainly coal miners but also other exposed workers, such as lightermen, if the lungs’ capacity to accommodate and remove the particles is exceeded. See pneumoconiosis.... coal-worker’s pneumoconiosis

surgical procedures that can be performed in a single day, without the need to admit the patient for an overnight stay in hospital. Modern techniques of surgery and anaesthesia now enable many surgical cases of minor and intermediate degrees of severity to be treated in this way: examples include many breast lesions, dilatation and curettage, and operations for hernia and varicose veins. Special units are established in many hospitals.... day-case surgery

a social worker employed to assist hospital patients with social problems that may arise through illness. See also social services.... hospital social worker

a form of extrinsic allergic *alveolitis seen in people who work with barley.... malt-worker’s lung

see social services.... social worker

a medical certificate that replaced forms Med 3 and Med 5 in April 2010 (see Appendix 8).... statement of fitness for work

a benefit payable to working people with a low income. There are four categories of eligibility: a person responsible for a child; a disabled person; a person who is aged over 50, has recently started work, and was receiving certain benefits before starting work; and a person aged over 25 and working more than 30 hours per week. Working tax credit is in the process of being replaced by *universal credit.... working tax credit

a person with a communicable disease in whom the symptoms and signs are so minimal that either there is no request for medical assistance or the doctor fails to make the diagnosis. The patient usually has partial immunity to the disease, but since the infecting organisms are of normal virulence, nonimmune contacts can be affected with the full manifestations of the illness. The period of infectivity is confined to the shortened duration of the illness (in contrast to a *carrier, in whom the pathogen is present without necessarily causing any ill effect). Alternatively, the subject has had the disease but retains some of the pathogens (e.g. in the throat or bowel) and so acts as a continuing reservoir of infection.... missed case