TAGME Data Management 5 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Which federal law primarily governs the privacy and security of residents' educational records held by a GME program?
- HIPAA
- FERPA (Correct answer)
- The ADA
- The Sarbanes-Oxley Act
Correct answer: FERPA
FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) governs the privacy of educational records, including residency training records, giving trainees rights over their own information.
Question 2: A program's pass rate on specialty board examinations falls below the national average for two consecutive years. The GME administrator's role is primarily to:
- Dismiss all residents who failed the boards
- Compile and present the data accurately to the Clinical Competency Committee for program improvement planning (Correct answer)
- Report the program to ACGME without internal review
- Suppress the data to avoid negative accreditation consequences
Correct answer: Compile and present the data accurately to the Clinical Competency Committee for program improvement planning
The administrator's role is to ensure accurate data is available to leadership bodies like the CCC so they can identify root causes and implement improvement strategies.
Question 3: When configuring role-based access controls in a residency management system, which principle should guide decisions about who can view or edit sensitive resident performance data?
- All GME office staff should have equal access to all data
- Access should be granted based on job function and need-to-know only (Correct answer)
- Only the DIO should have any access to resident data
- Access should be determined by seniority in the GME office
Correct answer: Access should be granted based on job function and need-to-know only
Role-based access control aligned with need-to-know limits exposure of sensitive data and reduces the risk of unauthorized disclosure or modification.
Question 4: A program administrator is building a report to show which rotations generate the most duty hour violations. Which analytical approach is most appropriate?
- Count total violations across the entire program without segmenting by rotation
- Stratify violations by rotation, time period, and resident level to identify patterns (Correct answer)
- Only report violations that resulted in formal disciplinary action
- Average all violations across the year to produce a single annual figure
Correct answer: Stratify violations by rotation, time period, and resident level to identify patterns
Stratifying violations by rotation, time period, and trainee level reveals where and when problems cluster, enabling targeted interventions.
Question 5: The GME Funding Accountability and Transparency Act (GFATA) requires institutions receiving GME Medicare funding to report which type of data?
- Resident personal income and tax information
- Detailed use of Medicare GME payments including costs and outcomes (Correct answer)
- Faculty private practice revenues
- Pharmaceutical company sponsorships of residency programs
Correct answer: Detailed use of Medicare GME payments including costs and outcomes
GFATA mandates that institutions report how Medicare GME funds are used, promoting accountability and transparency in the use of public training subsidies.
Question 6: A program administrator is asked to prepare a summary of resident scholarly activity. Which of the following is NOT typically counted as scholarly activity for ACGME purposes?
- Peer-reviewed journal publications
- Podium presentations at national conferences
- Quality improvement projects with measurable outcomes
- Participation in clinical care without a research or educational component (Correct answer)
Correct answer: Participation in clinical care without a research or educational component
Routine clinical care delivery, without a research, educational, or quality improvement component, does not constitute scholarly activity under ACGME definitions.
Question 7: If a residency program uses a spreadsheet instead of dedicated GME software to track evaluations, the greatest risk the administrator should flag to leadership is:
- The spreadsheet may not support enough font styles
- Version control failures and lack of audit trails increase risk of data loss and inaccuracy (Correct answer)
- Spreadsheets cannot be printed for accreditation review
- Faculty may find spreadsheets more difficult than paper forms
Correct answer: Version control failures and lack of audit trails increase risk of data loss and inaccuracy
Spreadsheets lack automated version control and audit trails, making it easy for data to be overwritten or lost and difficult to demonstrate data integrity during accreditation.
TAGME Data Management 5
Which federal law primarily governs the privacy and security of residents' educational records held by a GME program?