CPHIMS Clinical Informatics Principles Flashcards

LOINC codes are primarily used in clinical informatics to standardize the representation of:

Answer: Laboratory tests, clinical observations, and clinical document names

LOINC (Logical Observation Identifiers Names and Codes) provides universal codes for labs, clinical measurements, and document types to enable consistent exchange.

Which of the following BEST describes the role of a clinical informatics professional during system downtime?

Answer: Ensure downtime procedures are in place, practiced, and support safe patient care

Informatics professionals must ensure downtime procedures (paper-based or read-only access) are pre-established and tested so patient care continues safely.

The concept of 'minimum necessary' data access in healthcare information systems is MOST directly linked to:

Answer: HIPAA Privacy Rule

The HIPAA Privacy Rule establishes that covered entities may only access, use, or disclose the minimum amount of PHI necessary to accomplish the intended purpose.

A hospital implements a sepsis alert that triggers when lactate > 2 mmol/L AND systolic BP < 90 mmHg. This type of CDS logic is called:

Answer: Multi-condition composite rule

Multi-condition composite rules combine multiple clinical parameters using Boolean logic to improve alert specificity and reduce false-positive rates.

In clinical informatics governance, the PRIMARY purpose of a clinical informatics committee is to:

Answer: Align health information technology decisions with clinical priorities and safety

Clinical informatics committees bridge clinical and IT leadership to ensure technology decisions are driven by clinical needs, safety goals, and evidence.

Which stage of the data-information-knowledge-wisdom (DIKW) hierarchy does a clinical decision support alert represent?

Answer: Knowledge

CDS alerts encode clinical knowledge—evidence-based rules derived from synthesized information—applied to patient-specific data at the point of care.

A patient's medication list shows 'metoprolol' in one system and 'metoprolol succinate 25 mg oral' in another. Reconciling these requires which type of standard?

Answer: RxNorm

RxNorm provides normalized names and unique identifiers for clinical drugs, enabling systems to reconcile drug name variations into a single computable representation.