HAC Healthcare Analytics Data Collection & Management 3 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Under HIPAA's Minimum Necessary Standard, which practice is MOST appropriate when a health plan requests patient records?
- Provide only the specific information needed for the stated purpose (Correct answer)
- Send the complete medical record to avoid omissions
- Require written consent for every single request
- Deny all requests unless a subpoena is presented
Correct answer: Provide only the specific information needed for the stated purpose
The Minimum Necessary Standard limits disclosures to the least amount of PHI required to accomplish the intended purpose.
Question 2: Which statistical method is commonly used to assess inter-rater reliability when two coders independently assign diagnosis codes?
- Cohen's kappa (Correct answer)
- Pearson correlation
- Chi-square test
- Student's t-test
Correct answer: Cohen's kappa
Cohen's kappa measures agreement between raters while accounting for the possibility of agreement occurring by chance.
Question 3: A data analyst needs to share a dataset containing patient zip codes, ages, and diagnoses with a researcher. Which de-identification method should they use according to HIPAA Safe Harbor?
- Remove zip codes or generalize to 3-digit level and age-group ranges per Safe Harbor rules (Correct answer)
- Replace all values with random numbers before sharing
- Encrypt the data with a shared password sent via email
- Add a disclaimer stating the data is for research only
Correct answer: Remove zip codes or generalize to 3-digit level and age-group ranges per Safe Harbor rules
Safe Harbor requires removal or generalization of the 18 specified identifiers, including detailed geographic and age data.
Question 4: In healthcare data management, what does 'referential integrity' mean?
- Foreign key values in one table must correspond to existing primary key values in another table (Correct answer)
- All records must have a unique identifier assigned at the time of entry
- Data must be backed up before any update or delete operation is executed
- Clinical codes must reference current versions of standard coding taxonomies
Correct answer: Foreign key values in one table must correspond to existing primary key values in another table
Referential integrity is a database constraint ensuring relationships between tables remain consistent through valid foreign key references.
Question 5: Which type of healthcare data is MOST likely to be collected through passive surveillance rather than active data collection?
- Claims data from insurance billing systems (Correct answer)
- Patient-reported outcomes from survey instruments
- Biomarker measurements from clinical trials
- Dietary recall data from nutritional studies
Correct answer: Claims data from insurance billing systems
Claims data is generated automatically as a byproduct of billing and reimbursement without requiring extra effort to collect.
Question 6: Which challenge is UNIQUE to analyzing Electronic Health Record (EHR) data compared to data collected in structured clinical trials?
- High levels of missing data and variation in documentation practices across providers (Correct answer)
- Inability to link patient records over time
- Lack of any standardized clinical terminology
- Absence of timestamps on clinical events
Correct answer: High levels of missing data and variation in documentation practices across providers
EHR data suffers from informative missingness and inconsistent documentation since it is created for care delivery, not research.
Question 7: A hospital wants to benchmark its readmission rates against national averages. Which data source would be MOST appropriate for this comparison?
- CMS Hospital Compare publicly reported data (Correct answer)
- Internal incident report logs
- Pharmacy dispensing records from the hospital's own system
- Patient satisfaction survey free-text comments
Correct answer: CMS Hospital Compare publicly reported data
CMS Hospital Compare provides standardized, risk-adjusted readmission measures across hospitals nationally.
HAC Healthcare Analytics Data Collection & Management 3
Under HIPAA's Minimum Necessary Standard, which practice is MOST appropriate when a health plan requests patient records?