HAC Cheat Sheet 2026

The 30 highest-yield HAC facts, distilled from real exam questions. Print it, save it as a PDF, or study it here — free, no sign-up.

1. Which FHIR capability allows a client system to subscribe and receive automatic notifications when patient data changes? → FHIR Subscription resource
2. Under the Medicare Conditions of Participation, hospitals must retain medical records for at least: → 5 years from the date of discharge or 3 years after a minor reaches age 18
3. What is the purpose of the HITECH Act in healthcare compliance? → Encourages adoption of electronic health records
4. Which international classification system is most commonly used to define and code patient diagnoses and outcomes for administrative data analysis? → ICD-10-CM
5. Which technique reduces the complexity of a predictive model by eliminating features that contribute little to predictive power, improving generalizability? → Regularization
6. What is a primary advantage of cloud-based healthcare data storage? → Provides scalable and remote access to data
7. Which regulation specifically governs the privacy and security of substance use disorder patient records in the US? → 42 CFR Part 2
8. Which principle from information design discourages the use of decorative 3D effects, excessive gridlines, and background images in healthcare dashboards? → Both B and C
9. A healthcare dashboard shows hospital readmission rates by department. Which visualization principle ensures viewers correctly interpret magnitude differences? → Starting the Y-axis at zero
10. Which of the following is an example of a structural quality measure in Donabedian's model? → Percentage of physicians board-certified
11. In population health analytics, what does 'attribution' refer to? → Assigning patients to a specific provider or care team responsible for their outcomes
12. What challenge is common in Population Health Analytics for Healthcare Analytics Certification? → Data quality, integration, and privacy concerns
13. Which security framework is most commonly required for organizations participating in state and regional HIE networks to demonstrate compliance? → HITRUST CSF (Common Security Framework)
14. What is the role of a Record Locator Service (RLS) in a federated HIE? → Identifying which participating organizations hold data for a given patient
15. Which ONC-defined exchange framework establishes the governance structure for nationwide health information exchange in the US? → Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA)
16. Which indicator is used to assess health equity in maternal outcomes across racial groups? → Preterm birth rate stratified by race/ethnicity
17. Which statistical concept describes the minimum detectable difference a study is powered to identify? → Effect size
18. A hospital is measuring its Observed-to-Expected (O/E) mortality ratio. An O/E ratio of 0.78 should be interpreted as: → Mortality is 22% lower than expected given patient risk
19. In risk-adjusted quality measurement, what is the purpose of adjusting for case mix? → To ensure fair comparison of outcomes across providers with different patient populations
20. What is the primary goal of Quality Improvement Metrics in Healthcare Analytics Certification? → Using data to improve healthcare quality, efficiency, and outcomes
21. Which of the following is a key challenge when implementing CDSS across multiple facilities within a health system? → Standardizing data definitions and local value sets across sites
22. What is the primary advantage of using QALYs over life-years gained as an outcome measure in CEA? → QALYs incorporate both length and quality of life, enabling cross-disease comparisons
23. Which FHIR resource type is most commonly used to represent a patient's problem list in an HIE context? → Condition
24. Which data collection method is used in healthcare quality measurement to evaluate adherence to care standards by reviewing individual patient medical records? → Medical record abstraction
25. A natural language processing model assigns ICD-10 codes to clinical discharge summaries automatically. The primary quality metric for this task is: → Micro-averaged F1 score across all ICD codes
26. Which statistical method is BEST suited for identifying whether a hospital's surgical complication rate differs significantly from a peer group? → Z-score analysis or statistical process control
27. When de-identifying data under HIPAA's Safe Harbor method, how many specific identifiers must be removed? → 18
28. Which analytical method is MOST appropriate for identifying clusters of patients with similar chronic disease patterns and utilization behaviors? → K-means clustering
29. Which nationally recognized patient identifier strategy is currently being pursued under TEFCA to improve patient matching in the US? → Best-practice demographic-based matching without a unique ID
30. What is the primary limitation of using emergency department data alone for population health surveillance? → It captures only acute care-seeking behavior and misses individuals who do not seek care