CHA exam - is the NAHC study guide enough or do I need the prep workshop?
I'm an administrator at a mid-sized hospice and working toward the CHA credential. I've been in hospice administration for 6 years so I thought this would feel familiar, but the regulatory and compliance sections are more detailed than what I deal with daily. The Conditions of Participation questions in particular are getting me on practice tests.
I've been using the NAHC study guide and supplementing with the actual CMS CoP text. My practice scores are at 71% and the passing score is 75%. I study about 1.5 hours per evening and have been at it for 5 weeks. Ethics and quality metrics I'm doing well on - it's the finance and billing compliance questions dragging me down.
My exam is in 6 weeks and I'm deciding between a prep course and continuing self-study. The NHPCO prep workshop is $800 and I'm not sure I'd get enough incremental value. Has anyone done both routes and can actually compare them?
Six years of experience helps but the CHA tests more regulatory than operational knowledge. Bump your study time to 2 dedicated hours per day for the last 3 weeks and you should close that gap. The finance questions respond well to drilling - it's pattern recognition more than deep understanding.
The billing compliance questions test edge cases you might never encounter in a well-run organization. Focus specifically on Medicare hospice benefit election, revocation, and discharge scenarios. Those procedural details trip up experienced administrators who've never had a problematic election situation.
I did the NHPCO workshop and found maybe 40% of it was material I already knew well. But that other 60% was worth the price for me. If you're at 71% on practice tests with 6 weeks left, I'd probably invest in it.
Did self-study only and passed with 79%. The NAHC guide is sufficient but you have to know it cold. The CoP section is roughly 30% of the exam - I read through the actual CMS text twice, not just the guide summary.
Six years in hospice admin is honestly great background, but you're right that the CHA exam goes deeper on the regulatory side than most of us deal with day-to-day. One thing that helped me was pulling the actual CoPs from CMS.gov and reading them alongside the NAHC study guide — not just the summaries the guide gives you, but the full text. The exam writers love to test on the exact language of specific conditions, and there's a real difference between "understanding the concept" and knowing that a particular requirement lives under §418.52 versus §418.54.
For the compliance sections specifically, I'd make a one-page cheat sheet of each CoP with the key patient rights and timelines (72-hour visit windows, election statement requirements, that kind of thing). Sounds tedious but writing it out forces you to notice the distinctions that blur together when you're just reading. The workshop can be worth it if you're shaky on the financial management and governance sections — those modules are harder to self-study — but if regulations are your main gap, the guide plus the source documents should get you there without the extra cost.