AHIC AHIC Healthcare Workflow and Change Management 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: In the context of EHR optimization, 'alert fatigue' refers to:
- Hardware notification overload on clinical workstations
- Clinicians overriding or ignoring alerts due to excessive, irrelevant notifications (Correct answer)
- System performance degradation during peak alert generation
- Patients receiving too many automated health reminders
Correct answer: Clinicians overriding or ignoring alerts due to excessive, irrelevant notifications
Alert fatigue occurs when clinicians routinely override or ignore clinical decision support alerts because the volume of low-value alerts desensitizes them to important warnings.
Question 2: Which methodology is commonly used in healthcare to continuously improve clinical and operational workflows through iterative cycles?
- Waterfall project management
- Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycles (Correct answer)
- Critical path method (CPM)
- PRINCE2 framework
Correct answer: Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycles
PDSA cycles are the standard quality improvement methodology in healthcare, enabling small, iterative tests of change before broader implementation.
Question 3: A health system is migrating from one EHR to another. Which risk is MOST associated with data migration during this transition?
- Loss of HIPAA Business Associate Agreements
- Data integrity issues including missing records, mapping errors, and loss of historical data (Correct answer)
- Expiration of software vendor support contracts
- Reduction in network bandwidth capacity
Correct answer: Data integrity issues including missing records, mapping errors, and loss of historical data
EHR-to-EHR data migration carries significant risks of data integrity loss including incomplete record transfer, field mapping errors, and loss of historical documentation.
Question 4: Process mapping in health IT workflow analysis most commonly uses which tool to visualize handoffs between roles or departments?
- Fishbone (Ishikawa) diagram
- Swim lane diagram (Correct answer)
- Pareto chart
- Control chart
Correct answer: Swim lane diagram
Swim lane diagrams depict processes with lanes for each role or department, making handoffs, decision points, and accountability clear across complex workflows.
Question 5: The primary purpose of a training needs assessment (TNA) before a health IT go-live is to:
- Estimate software licensing costs
- Identify knowledge and skill gaps to design role-specific training programs (Correct answer)
- Determine network infrastructure requirements
- Negotiate vendor service level agreements
Correct answer: Identify knowledge and skill gaps to design role-specific training programs
A TNA identifies what staff already know versus what they need to know, enabling targeted, role-specific training rather than one-size-fits-all instruction.
Question 6: Following an EHR implementation, a 'lessons learned' session is BEST conducted to:
- Assign blame for go-live problems to individual staff
- Document successes and failures to improve future implementation processes (Correct answer)
- Satisfy vendor contractual obligations
- Finalize budget reconciliation reports
Correct answer: Document successes and failures to improve future implementation processes
Lessons learned sessions systematically capture what worked and what failed during implementation to improve organizational capability for future IT projects.
AHIC AHIC Healthcare Workflow and Change Management 2
In the context of EHR optimization, 'alert fatigue' refers to: