MIPS
Abbreviation with 3 meanings
| Stands for | Merit-based Incentive Payment System |
|---|---|
| Meanings | 3 |
| Categories | Medical, Technology & Computing |
MIPS has three meanings. The most common are Merit-based Incentive Payment System (health insurance) and Microprocessor without Interlocked Pipeline Stages (computer hardware); it can also stand for Million instructions per second.
Meanings of MIPS at a glance
| # | MIPS stands for | Context |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Merit-based Incentive Payment System | Medical › Health Insurance |
| 2 | Microprocessor without Interlocked Pipeline Stages | Technology & Computing › Computer Hardware |
| 3 | Million instructions per second | Technology & Computing › Computer Hardware |
1. Merit-based Incentive Payment System
Medical · Health Insurance Abbreviations
Medicare program that adjusts clinicians' Part B payments up or down according to performance in four categories: quality, cost, improvement activities and promoting interoperability. It is one of the two tracks of the Quality Payment Program created by MACRA.
Example: Our MIPS final score of 88 earned a small positive payment adjustment.
Adjustments apply two years after the performance year and have reached up to plus or minus 9 percent. Clinicians participating sufficiently in advanced alternative payment models are exempt. MIPS Value Pathways (MVPs) are gradually replacing the traditional reporting framework.
2. Microprocessor without Interlocked Pipeline Stages
Technology & Computing · Computer Hardware Abbreviations
RISC processor architecture created at Stanford and commercialized by MIPS Computer Systems in 1984, used in SGI workstations, the Nintendo 64, the original PlayStation, the PlayStation 2 and countless routers and set-top boxes.
Example: The cheap home router runs Linux on a MIPS processor.
John Hennessy led the Stanford project that produced MIPS, and its clean design made it a favorite in computer-architecture textbooks. Silicon Graphics bought MIPS Computer Systems in 1992. The architecture faded in consumer devices in the 2010s, and in 2021 the company behind it announced it would design RISC-V chips instead. The name puns on the speed metric of the same letters.
3. Million instructions per second
Technology & Computing · Computer Hardware Abbreviations
Old measure of processor speed counting how many millions of machine instructions a CPU executes each second. It was widely quoted for mainframes and early microprocessors.
Example: The VAX-11/780 was rated at about 1 MIPS and became a benchmark for comparing other machines.
Because instructions do different amounts of work on different architectures, MIPS comparisons were unreliable, earning the jokey expansion "meaningless indicator of processor speed". Benchmarks such as Dhrystone MIPS tried to standardize it. Modern performance is measured with application benchmarks such as SPEC and Geekbench, or in FLOPS for scientific and AI workloads.
Related abbreviations
More health insurance abbreviations
- MAGI – Modified adjusted gross income
- MAPD – Medicare Advantage Prescription Drug plan
- MCO – Managed care organization
- MEC – Minimum essential coverage
- MLR – Medical loss ratio
- MOOP – Maximum out-of-pocket
- MPFS – Medicare Physician Fee Schedule
- MS-DRG – Medicare Severity Diagnosis-Related Group
See all 107 health insurance abbreviations →
More computer hardware abbreviations
- mATX – Micro-ATX
- MFP – Multifunction printer
- microSD – Micro Secure Digital
- Mini-ITX – Mini-ITX motherboard form factor
- MLC – Multi-level cell
- MoBo – Motherboard
- MTBF – Mean time between failures
- NAND – NOT-AND (NAND flash memory)
See all 151 computer hardware abbreviations →
This entry is for general education and is not medical advice. Abbreviation use varies between institutions; always confirm in context.