Free CPHIMS practice questions, with every option explained

20 exam-style questions from the site's free plan, open to everyone. Each has its own page with the answer and the full explanation: why the answer is right, why each of the other options is wrong, and the concept to remember.

Healthcare and Technology Environments

• Capitation versus fee-for-service A health plan pays a primary care group a fixed amount for each enrolled member every month, whether the member makes no visits or many visits. Which payment model is thi...
• Reducing 30-day readmissions A hospital's Medicare payments are reduced because its 30-day readmission rate for heart failure is higher than expected. The CMIO is asked which informatics initiative w...
• EMTALA and emergency department registration An emergency department is redesigning its electronic registration workflow. The revenue cycle team wants insurance eligibility confirmed before a patient is triaged and...
• Bandwidth versus latency A clinic 2,500 miles from the hospital's data center upgraded its network link from 100 Mbps to 1 Gbps, but a client-server application that sends many small requests bac...
• Which code set for which type of data? An interoperability team is mapping local data to national code sets. Which pairing of data element and code set is correct?
• Types of backup: full, differential and incremental A hospital takes a full backup of a database every Sunday night and a differential backup on each of the other six nights. The database fails on Thursday morning. Which b...
• Health information exchange architectures Hospitals joining a regional health information exchange insist on keeping patient data in their own systems. The exchange will hold only a patient index and a record loc...

Clinical Informatics

• The main benefit of computerized provider order entry (CPOE) A hospital's board asks the CMIO to explain the MAIN patient safety benefit of moving from handwritten orders to computerized provider order entry (CPOE). Which answer is...
• Coded allergies are a condition for the alert to work A patient with a documented penicillin allergy received amoxicillin without any allergy alert. The allergy had been entered as free text in a comment field ("PCN - hives"...
• Donabedian’s framework: structure, process and outcome A hospital tracks four measures for heart attack care. Which one is a PROCESS measure in Donabedian's framework?
• The Swiss cheese model An investigation finds that a wrong-dose error reached a patient only because an unclear order screen, a missed pharmacist check during a very busy shift, and a barcode s...
• De-identification by the Safe Harbor method A hospital wants to share a dataset with a university using the HIPAA Safe Harbor method of de-identification. Which step is required?
• The alert threshold: balancing sensitivity and specificity A team raises the risk-score threshold at which a deterioration model sends alerts. Assuming nothing else changes, what is the MOST likely effect?

Management and Leadership

• The RACI matrix for assigning responsibilities A project team is building a RACI chart for the task "approve the final order set content." Which rule should the chart follow?
• Earned value management: SPI and CPI At a status review, a project has a planned value (PV) of $200,000, an earned value (EV) of $160,000, and an actual cost (AC) of $180,000. Which statement is correct?
• Sunk cost and opportunity cost A hospital has already spent $2 million over three years on a custom scheduling system that still does not work. A proven commercial product would cost $800,000 to implem...
• Build versus buy A health system is deciding whether to build its own patient mobile app or buy a vendor product that integrates with its EHR. Which situation MOST favors building?
• Incident management versus problem management in ITIL The EHR login screen froze for many users three times this week. Each time, the service desk restored service by restarting a server. Which ITIL process should now invest...
• Kotter’s model for leading change A CMIO is leading a system-wide change to a new clinical documentation approach. According to Kotter's eight-step model of change, what should come FIRST?
• Diversity and inclusion in informatics teams An informatics leader wants to build a more diverse and inclusive team to better serve a diverse patient population. Which action is MOST effective?

CPHIMS guide

Practice questions written for study; they are not the questions of the real exam. An independent site, not affiliated with or endorsed by HIMSS. CPHIMS® is a registered trademark of HIMSS.