Preferred provider organization
A preferred provider organization is a subscription-based medical care arrangement. A membership allows a substantial discount below the regularly charged rates of the designated professionals partnered with the organization. Preferred provider organizations themselves earn money by charging an access fee to the insurance company for the use of their network (unlike the usual insurance with premiums and corresponding payments paid either in full or partially by the insurance provider to the medical doctor). They negotiate with providers to set fee schedules, and handle disputes between insurers and providers. PPOs can also contract with one another to strengthen their position in certain geographic areas without forming new relationships directly with providers. This will be mutually beneficial in theory, as be billed at a reduced rate when its insureds utilize the services of the "preferred" provider and the provider will see an increase in its business as almost all insureds in the organization will use only providers who are members. PPOs have gained popularity because, although they tend to have slightly higher premiums than HMOs and other more restrictive plans, they offer patients more flexibility overall.
Body part as an object
Use of BPO pantomimes, instead of the IO pantomimes dominant in non-apraxic patients (i.e. BPO errors), is one of the diagnostic error patterns in apraxia. Though BPO errors seem to be inconsistent in their efficacy for diagnosing apraxia: many studies have shown BPO errors being distinctly associated with the apraxic symptomatology; while many have shown they are not. However, it has been asserted that these apparently contradicting results may be due to a lack of control for confounding factors. For example, BPO errors are differentially affected by age and educational level in normal subjects; older, healthy people (tested group average 69 years old) and healthy adults with lower amount of education (tested group with average 7.2 years of formal education) make significantly more BPO errors than the average adult population.