Search Tips

The Essentials of DecisionHealth Search

Doing a search on DecisionHealth is easy. Simply type one or more search terms (the words or phrase that best describe the information you want to find) into the search box and hit the 'Enter' key or click on the "Search" button.

Phrase Searches

Sometimes you'll only want results that include an exact phrase. In this case, simply put quotation marks around your search terms.

Phrase searches are particularly effective if you're searching for proper names ("George Bush"), articles ("Final PPS rule"), or other phrases ("Medicare patients").

Capitalization

DecisionHealth searches are NOT case sensitive. All letters, regardless of how you type them, will be understood as lower case. For example, searches for coding, Coding, and CoDiNg will all return the same results.

Automatic "and" Queries

By default, DecisionHealth only returns pages that include all of your search terms. There is no need to include "and" between terms. Keep in mind that the order in which the terms are typed will affect the search results.

Word Variations

DecisionHealth now uses stemming technology. Thus, when appropriate, it will search not only for your search terms, but also for words that are similar to some or all of those terms. If you search for medicare patient dietary needs, DecisionHealth will also search for medicare patient diet needs, and other related variations of your terms. Any variants of your terms that were searched for will be highlighted in the snippet of text accompanying each result.

Wildcards (* and ?)

A search word can contain the wildcard characters * and ?. A ? in a word matches any single character, and a * matches any number of characters. The wildcard characters can be in any position in a word. For example:

• appl* would match apple, application, etc.
• *cipl* would match principle, participle, etc.
• appl? would match apply and apple but not apples.
• ap*ed would match applied, approved, etc.

Use of the * wildcard character near the beginning of a word will slow searches somewhat.

Still can't find what you are looking for?

Please contact us and we will be glad to help you.