MHA Population Health Management 3 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Which epidemiological measure best describes the proportion of a population that has a disease at a specific point in time?
- Incidence rate
- Point prevalence (Correct answer)
- Attack rate
- Mortality rate
Correct answer: Point prevalence
Point prevalence is the proportion of a defined population with a condition at one specific moment, capturing existing cases regardless of when onset occurred.
Question 2: A population health manager notices high rates of asthma hospitalizations in a specific zip code. The FIRST step in addressing this disparity should be:
- Launching a community asthma education program immediately
- Conducting a root cause analysis to identify environmental and social factors (Correct answer)
- Increasing specialist referrals from local primary care providers
- Negotiating lower inhaler costs with pharmaceutical companies
Correct answer: Conducting a root cause analysis to identify environmental and social factors
A root cause analysis identifies the underlying drivers—such as housing quality, air pollution, or access barriers—before interventions are selected.
Question 3: Which model assigns a primary care team responsible for a defined panel of patients and coordinates all care for that panel?
- Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH) (Correct answer)
- Specialty referral network
- Direct primary care subscription
- Urgent care on-demand model
Correct answer: Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH)
The PCMH model organizes care around a primary care team that coordinates comprehensive, continuous, and accessible care for an assigned patient panel.
Question 4: In population health, 'hot spotting' refers to:
- Identifying geographic clusters of high-cost, high-need patients to target interventions (Correct answer)
- Mapping infectious disease outbreaks using GPS data
- Flagging duplicate medical records in an EHR system
- Detecting billing fraud through claims analysis
Correct answer: Identifying geographic clusters of high-cost, high-need patients to target interventions
Hot spotting, pioneered by physician Jeffrey Brenner, identifies small clusters of high-utilizers whose concentrated needs and costs respond well to intensive community-based care.
Question 5: Which federal program ties Medicare payments to quality performance measures and encourages physicians to adopt value-based care?
- Meaningful Use
- Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) (Correct answer)
- Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program
- Stark Law compliance program
Correct answer: Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS)
MIPS is part of MACRA and adjusts Medicare physician payments based on quality, cost, improvement activities, and promoting interoperability measures.
Question 6: A health plan uses geomapping to overlay pharmacy deserts with high-diabetes zip codes. This is an example of applying which concept?
- Utilization management
- Geographic information systems (GIS) for health equity analysis (Correct answer)
- Prior authorization optimization
- Clinical decision support integration
Correct answer: Geographic information systems (GIS) for health equity analysis
GIS tools allow population health managers to visualize where resource gaps intersect with high-burden disease areas to prioritize equity-focused interventions.
Question 7: Under the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid expansion primarily aimed to improve population health by:
- Reducing commercial insurance premiums
- Extending coverage to low-income adults previously uninsured (Correct answer)
- Mandating electronic health record adoption
- Creating new hospital quality reporting requirements
Correct answer: Extending coverage to low-income adults previously uninsured
Medicaid expansion under the ACA extended eligibility to adults with incomes up to 138% of the federal poverty level, reducing uninsured rates in expansion states.
MHA Population Health Management 3
Which epidemiological measure best describes the proportion of a population that has a disease at a specific point in time?