Patient Outreach Glossary: TCPA, STIR/SHAKEN, HEDIS

"Spam Likely" call labeling: "Spam Likely" call labeling is the warning a carrier or analytics provider attaches to an incoming call it scores as unwanted, shown on the recipient's screen in place of or beside the caller ID.
Advanced Primary Care Management (APCM): Advanced Primary Care Management (APCM) is a set of monthly Medicare care-management services, introduced in 2025, that pay primary care practices a bundled amount per patient for delivering ongoing, coordinated, patient-centered care.
AI call screening: AI call screening is a smartphone feature in which an automated assistant answers calls from unknown numbers, asks the caller for their name and reason, and lets the owner decide whether to pick up.
AI voice disclosure laws: AI voice disclosure laws are federal and state rules that require a caller to identify itself and, increasingly, to tell the person on the line that they are speaking with an artificial or AI-generated voice.
Annual Wellness Visit (AWV): The Annual Wellness Visit (AWV) is a yearly Medicare Part B preventive visit in which a clinician and patient develop or update a personalized prevention plan, covered with no copayment or deductible when the provider accepts assignment.
Attestation levels (A, B, C): Attestation levels are the three grades of confidence (A for full, B for partial, C for gateway) that an originating provider assigns when it signs a call under STIR/SHAKEN.
Autodialer (ATDS): An autodialer, or automatic telephone dialing system (ATDS), is equipment the TCPA defines as having the capacity to store or produce telephone numbers to be called using a random or sequential number generator, and to dial those numbers.
Branded caller ID: Branded caller ID is the display of a verified business name, and increasingly its logo and call reason, on the recipient's phone screen when that business calls.
Business Associate Agreement (BAA): A Business Associate Agreement (BAA) is the contract HIPAA requires between a covered entity and a vendor that handles protected health information on its behalf, setting out how the vendor may use and must safeguard that PHI.
Calling-hour restrictions: Calling-hour restrictions are federal and state rules that limit the times of day when certain calls may be placed, led by the federal ban on telephone solicitations before 8 a.m. or after 9 p.m. in the called party's local time.
Care gap: A care gap is a difference between the care a patient should receive under clinical guidelines or quality measures, such as a screening, vaccination, follow-up visit, or medication refill, and the care the patient has actually received.
CCaaS: CCaaS (contact center as a service) is cloud-hosted contact center software that routes, queues, and manages the calls and other interactions handled by human agents, in place of on-premises call center systems.
Chronic Care Management (CCM): Chronic Care Management (CCM) is a Medicare-reimbursed service in which a care team provides ongoing, non-face-to-face care coordination each month for patients with two or more chronic conditions expected to last at least 12 months.
CNAM: CNAM (caller ID name) is the short text name, up to 15 characters, displayed with an incoming call's number, which the recipient's carrier typically looks up in a CNAM database rather than receiving with the call.
Consent revocation: Consent revocation is a person withdrawing previously given permission to receive automated calls or texts, which under FCC rules can be done by any reasonable means and must be honored within 10 business days.
Conversational context firewall: A conversational context firewall is an architectural boundary in an AI conversation system that controls which data may enter a language model's context, keeping sensitive information such as credentials, identifiers, or health details out of the model unless a step specifically requires it.
CPaaS: CPaaS (communications platform as a service) is a cloud model in which a provider offers programmable building blocks, such as phone numbers, call control, messaging, and APIs, that developers use to add voice and text to their own applications.
Deterministic vs. generative voice AI: Deterministic vs. generative voice AI is the distinction between call steps that run as fixed, scripted logic and behave identically every time, and steps where a large language model generates responses that can vary for the same input.
Do Not Call (DNC): Do Not Call (DNC) refers to the federal and state rules, and the registries behind them, that let consumers block telemarketing calls, including the National Do Not Call Registry run by the FTC since 2003.
HEDIS: HEDIS (Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set) is the set of standardized performance measures, maintained by the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA), that health plans use to report on care quality.
HIPAA: HIPAA (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996) is the U.S. federal law whose Privacy, Security, and Breach Notification Rules govern how covered entities and their business associates use, protect, and disclose protected health information.
Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP): The Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP) is the Medicare program, created by the Affordable Care Act, that reduces inpatient payments to hospitals with higher-than-expected 30-day readmission rates for selected conditions and procedures.
IVR: IVR (interactive voice response) is telephone technology that interacts with callers through prerecorded or synthesized prompts and keypad or spoken input, used to route calls, deliver information, and automate simple transactions.
Medicare Star Ratings: Medicare Star Ratings are the one-to-five-star quality scores that CMS publishes each year for Medicare Advantage and Part D prescription drug plans.
Medication adherence: Medication adherence is the extent to which a patient takes medication as prescribed, including filling and refilling prescriptions on time, and for Medicare Star Ratings it is measured as the share of a period in which the patient had the medication on hand.
Mini-TCPA laws: Mini-TCPA laws are state statutes that regulate telephone solicitations and automated calls and texts on top of the federal TCPA, often with their own consent rules, calling-hour and frequency limits, and private rights of action.
Number reputation: Number reputation is the trust score that carriers and call-analytics engines assign to a calling phone number, which determines whether its calls ring normally, display a spam label, or are blocked.
Passkey: A passkey is a passwordless sign-in credential based on the FIDO Alliance and W3C WebAuthn standards, in which a public-private key pair replaces the password and the service stores only the public key.
PHI: PHI (protected health information) is individually identifiable health information, including demographic data, that a HIPAA covered entity or business associate creates, receives, maintains, or transmits in any form.
PHQ-9: The PHQ-9 (Patient Health Questionnaire-9) is a validated nine-question instrument used to screen for depression and measure its severity, with each item scored 0 to 3 for a total of 0 to 27.
Post-discharge follow-up: Post-discharge follow-up is structured contact with a patient in the days after leaving a hospital or emergency department, covering medications, warning signs, and follow-up appointments, to catch problems before they become readmissions.
Prior express consent: Prior express consent is the permission a person gives, before a call is placed, to receive autodialed or artificial- or prerecorded-voice calls at a given number, and it is the main legal basis for automated calls under the TCPA.
Prior express written consent: Prior express written consent is the signed, written agreement that FCC rules require before a seller places telemarketing calls using an autodialer or an artificial or prerecorded voice, a stricter standard than the prior express consent that covers informational calls.
Reassigned Numbers Database (RND): The Reassigned Numbers Database (RND) is the FCC-established database that callers can query to learn whether a telephone number has been permanently disconnected, and so may have been reassigned, since a given date, with a TCPA safe harbor for callers who rely on it.
Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM): Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) is the collection of a patient's physiologic data, such as blood pressure, weight, or glucose, through connected devices at home, with the data reviewed by a care team to manage the patient's condition.
Right-party contact (RPC) rate: Right-party contact (RPC) rate is the share of outbound call attempts that reach and identify the intended person, as distinct from the answer rate, which counts calls answered by anyone or anything.
Robocall: A robocall is a call that delivers a prerecorded or artificial voice message, a category the TCPA regulates through consent, identification, and opt-out rules, and one that since February 2024 includes calls made with AI-generated voices.
Step-up authentication: Step-up authentication is the practice of requiring an additional or stronger identity check partway through an interaction when the user attempts a higher-risk action, rather than demanding the strongest check for every interaction.
STIR/SHAKEN: STIR/SHAKEN is the caller ID authentication framework the FCC has required of major U.S. voice providers since 2021, which cryptographically attests that a call's originating number was not spoofed in transit.
TCPA: The TCPA (Telephone Consumer Protection Act) is the 1991 U.S. federal law that restricts calls and texts placed with an autodialer or an artificial or prerecorded voice, sets consent requirements for those calls, and created the national framework for Do Not Call rules.
TCPA healthcare exemption: The TCPA healthcare exemption is the FCC's 2015 exemption allowing certain healthcare calls and texts with a treatment purpose to be made to wireless numbers without prior express consent, provided the caller meets strict conditions on content, frequency, and opt-out.
Transitional Care Management (TCM): Transitional Care Management (TCM) is a Medicare-reimbursed service covering the 30 days after a patient is discharged from a hospital or other qualifying facility to the community, and it requires interactive contact with the patient within two business days of discharge.
vCon: A vCon (virtual conversation) is an open, standardized container for conversation data that packages a conversation's participants, recordings or transcripts, analysis, and attachments into a single portable JSON document, and is being standardized through the IETF.
Warm handoff: A warm handoff is a transfer of a patient conversation to another person, such as a nurse or care coordinator, in which the context of the conversation travels with it so the patient does not have to start over.
Zero-knowledge proof: A zero-knowledge proof is a cryptographic method by which one party proves to another that a statement is true, such as that it knows a secret or meets a condition, without revealing any information beyond the fact that the statement is true.

The patient outreach glossary

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