ROI (Return on Investment)
A ratio comparing net benefits to investment over a defined time period, sensitive to the chosen time window and to what counts as costs and benefits.
See also: Payback period, NPV
Every term has a definition, an anchor, and an owner.
Healthcare finance and technology ROI run on shorthand. This glossary defines every term we use — with stable deep-link anchors so you can cite a definition from email, a Slack thread, or another page.
Terms used across this site
DSO (Days Sales Outstanding)
A receivables measure that approximates how many days it takes to collect revenue after a sale.[1]
DPO (Days Payables Outstanding)
A payables measure that approximates how many days it takes to pay suppliers.[1]
CCC (Cash Conversion Cycle)
A working-capital concept that connects receivables, inventory, and payables timing into a single days-of-cash measure.
NPV (Net Present Value)
The present value of expected future cash flows discounted at a chosen rate; used to compare investments with different timing.
IRR (Internal Rate of Return)
The discount rate that makes NPV equal to zero; useful for ranking but can mislead when cash flows are non-standard.
Payback period
The time required for cumulative benefits to recover the initial investment.
WACC (Weighted Average Cost of Capital)
A common proxy for a company’s cost of capital used to discount cash flows in NPV models.[2]
wRVU (Work Relative Value Unit)
A standardized measure of physician work effort used in compensation models and provider productivity reporting.
wRVUs are central to physician compensation allocations and provider profitability analysis. They isolate the physician-effort component of a service from practice expense and malpractice components.
See also: Productivity realization
Productivity realization
The percentage of modeled productivity gains expected to be captured in practice given adoption, constraints, and the pace of change.
See also: wRVU
One-time implementation costs
Non-recurring costs required to implement a change, such as implementation services, internal project time, and initial training.
See also: Fully loaded labor
Fully loaded labor
Labor cost that includes wages, payroll taxes, benefits, and a reasonable allocation of overhead.
Allocation transparency
A reporting principle where every allocated amount can be traced back to the journal entry and the snapshot of the rule that produced it.
Required for defensible physician compensation, service-line profitability, and inter-entity charges. In Sage Intacct, this is implemented via Dynamic Allocations with versioned rule snapshots.
Multi-entity consolidation
The process of combining the financial results of multiple legal entities into one set of statements with consistent eliminations and translations.
Dimensions (multi-dimensional reporting)
Tags on transactions (location, department, project, provider, service line) that let one chart of accounts support many reporting views without proliferating GL accounts.
See definitions in context on the methodology page and answered against real scenarios on the FAQ.
Sources used on this page
JPMorgan: DSO and DPO: how they can improve your cash flow
Definitions and practical framing for receivables and payables cycle metrics and cash flow impact.
Accessed 2025-12-12
Aswath Damodaran, NYU Stern: WACC central
Overview and related references for WACC and cost of capital estimation.
Accessed 2025-12-12