The Specialty Vocabulary categorizes medical specialties, allowing for standardized communication, documentation, and billing. It helps in defining roles, training requirements, and referral processes within the healthcare system.

American Medical Association (AMA): Provides standards for medical specialties and subspecialties.

American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS): Offers a comprehensive list of recognized specialties and their corresponding certification requirements.

National Provider Identifier (NPI): Contains information about healthcare providers, including their specialties.

All Concepts are assigned the Full Source Name whereas the Short Description is stored as a Synonym.

Concept codes are taken from the ‘Specialty Code’.

The Specialty Vocabulary concepts are in the ‘Provider’ domain.

Concept Classes

The Specialty Vocabulary concepts are composed from the following Concept Classes.

Class	Notes
Provider
Physician Specialty

Specialty Vocabulary concepts are non-Standard Concepts and therefore do not participate in the hierarchy of the CONCEPT_ANCESTOR table.

Specialty Vocabulary concepts are non-Standard. That means they have to be mapped to the corresponding Standard Concepts using the CONCEPT_RELATIONSHIP table ("Maps to" records). They are mapped to single Provider Concepts, generating one-to-one records in the Provider table.