AHIC Decision Support 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Which type of clinical decision support alert fires when a clinician attempts to order a medication that the patient has documented allergy to?
- Passive advisory
- Hard stop alert
- Drug-allergy alert (Correct answer)
- Dose range check
Correct answer: Drug-allergy alert
A drug-allergy alert is triggered at order entry when the ordered medication conflicts with a documented patient allergy.
Question 2: In the context of CDS, what does 'infobutton' refer to?
- A button that submits patient data to a registry
- A context-sensitive link that retrieves relevant reference information at the point of care (Correct answer)
- An alert that fires when lab values are critical
- A shortcut to the medication reconciliation module
Correct answer: A context-sensitive link that retrieves relevant reference information at the point of care
An infobutton provides context-sensitive access to reference knowledge resources based on the clinical context (patient, condition, medication) at the point of care.
Question 3: A hospital wants to reduce inappropriate antibiotic use. Which CDS intervention is best suited for stewardship at the time of prescribing?
- Post-discharge audit reports
- Order set with preferred agents and required justification fields (Correct answer)
- Patient education pamphlets
- Weekly pharmacy committee meetings
Correct answer: Order set with preferred agents and required justification fields
An antibiotic order set with built-in preferred-agent guidance and mandatory indication fields provides stewardship at the prescribing moment.
Question 4: Which metric best evaluates whether a CDS alert is being acted upon appropriately?
- Alert firing rate
- Alert override rate (Correct answer)
- Number of alerts configured
- System uptime percentage
Correct answer: Alert override rate
The alert override rate reveals how often clinicians bypass alerts; a high rate may indicate alert fatigue or poorly calibrated rules.
Question 5: What is the primary purpose of a drug-drug interaction (DDI) checker in a clinical decision support system?
- To calculate renal dosing adjustments
- To warn prescribers when two ordered medications have a known adverse interaction (Correct answer)
- To replace pharmacist review entirely
- To flag medications not on formulary
Correct answer: To warn prescribers when two ordered medications have a known adverse interaction
A DDI checker cross-references the patient's medication list and warns the prescriber of known pharmacological interactions between co-prescribed drugs.
Question 6: Which standard enables EHR systems to share CDS rules using a common, interoperable format?
- HL7 FHIR CDS Hooks (Correct answer)
- DICOM SR
- X12 EDI 270
- SNOMED RF2
Correct answer: HL7 FHIR CDS Hooks
CDS Hooks is an HL7 FHIR-based standard that allows external CDS services to integrate with EHR workflows at defined trigger points.
Question 7: A CDS rule recommends beta-blockers for all patients with a diagnosis of heart failure. A patient with severe asthma receives this recommendation. This illustrates which CDS limitation?
- Lack of integration with pharmacy systems
- Failure to account for contraindications in recommendation logic (Correct answer)
- Inadequate alert volume
- Poor user interface design
Correct answer: Failure to account for contraindications in recommendation logic
The rule failed to incorporate contraindication logic (asthma is a contraindication to non-selective beta-blockers), producing a potentially harmful recommendation.
AHIC Decision Support 2
Which type of clinical decision support alert fires when a clinician attempts to order a medication that the patient has documented allergy to?