CMC Project Planning & Execution 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: When planning a cardiac rehabilitation program expansion, which stakeholder group should be engaged FIRST to ensure clinical alignment?
- Hospital administration
- Cardiologists and referring physicians (Correct answer)
- Physical therapists
- Insurance billing specialists
Correct answer: Cardiologists and referring physicians
Cardiologists and referring physicians drive patient referrals and must endorse the clinical protocols before any cardiac rehab expansion can succeed.
Question 2: A project charter for a new cardiac catheterization lab includes all of the following EXCEPT:
- Project scope and objectives
- Detailed equipment specifications and vendor contracts (Correct answer)
- High-level timeline and milestones
- Identified project sponsor and key stakeholders
Correct answer: Detailed equipment specifications and vendor contracts
A project charter defines scope, objectives, timeline, and stakeholders at a high level; detailed vendor contracts belong in the procurement planning phase.
Question 3: During execution of a heart failure disease management program, variance analysis reveals that patient enrollment is 20% below target at the midpoint. The BEST next step is:
- Extend the project timeline by 20%
- Conduct a root cause analysis and adjust the referral strategy (Correct answer)
- Increase the project budget to hire additional staff
- Close the project and redesign from scratch
Correct answer: Conduct a root cause analysis and adjust the referral strategy
Root cause analysis identifies why enrollment is lagging so that targeted corrective actions—such as improving referral pathways—can be implemented efficiently.
Question 4: The critical path in a cardiac quality improvement project represents:
- The sequence of tasks with the most expensive resources
- The longest sequence of dependent activities that determines the minimum project duration (Correct answer)
- All activities that require physician approval
- Tasks assigned to the highest-risk clinical areas
Correct answer: The longest sequence of dependent activities that determines the minimum project duration
The critical path is the longest chain of dependent tasks; any delay on it directly delays project completion.
Question 5: A hospital implements a PDSA (Plan-Do-Study-Act) cycle to reduce door-to-balloon time for STEMI patients. After the 'Study' phase, data show no improvement. The MOST appropriate action is:
- Abandon the improvement initiative
- Scale up the intervention hospital-wide
- Revise the plan based on findings and run another cycle (Correct answer)
- Report the failure to the Joint Commission
Correct answer: Revise the plan based on findings and run another cycle
PDSA cycles are iterative; when the Study phase shows no improvement, the team revises the plan and tests again rather than abandoning the effort.
Question 6: Which risk response strategy is MOST appropriate when a cardiac project team identifies that a key vendor for monitoring equipment may go out of business?
- Accept
- Avoid
- Transfer
- Mitigate (Correct answer)
Correct answer: Mitigate
Mitigation involves pre-qualifying an alternative vendor so that the impact of the primary vendor's failure is reduced.
Question 7: In a Gantt chart used for planning a new cardiac ICU, the horizontal bars represent:
- Resource costs per task
- Task durations and their scheduled start and end dates (Correct answer)
- Staff competency levels required
- Patient volume projections
Correct answer: Task durations and their scheduled start and end dates
Gantt chart bars depict the scheduled start date, end date, and duration of each project task along a timeline.
CMC Project Planning & Execution 2
When planning a cardiac rehabilitation program expansion, which stakeholder group should be engaged FIRST to ensure clinical alignment?