NAHQ Updated CPHQ Exam Questions and Answers by evie-mae

Detailed Explanation:

Promoting safety within an organization is best achieved by empowering staff to take responsibility for safety on their units:

Option C: Empower staff to take ownership of unit-based safety issues

This fosters a proactive safety culture, where staff feel accountable and involved, leading to more effective safetypractices.

Option A: Discuss safety events with managers at the unit level

While this is beneficial, it’s less effective than direct staff empowerment.

Option B: Ensure staff are aware of psychological safety concepts

Psychological safety is important but needs to be paired with empowerment to drive action.

Option D: Encourage patients to participate in the advisory council

Patient participation is valuable but indirect for internal safety promotion.

The key responsibility of a healthcare quality professional across all types of facilities and organizations is tocoordinate internal support for quality improvement activities. This role is central to their function in maintaining and enhancing healthcare quality. Here's why:

Facilitating Quality Improvement Initiatives: Quality professionals are responsible for leading and coordinating quality improvement projects, ensuring that these initiatives are aligned with organizational goals and are effectively implemented.

Engaging the Workforce: Coordinating internal support involves engaging with various departments and staff members to foster a culture of quality. This includes providing the necessary tools, training, and resources for quality improvement activities, as well as ensuring that there is a collaborative approach to solving quality-related issues.

Sustaining Continuous Improvement: Quality professionals must ensure that quality improvement activities are ongoing and not just one-time efforts. By coordinating internal support, they help embed continuous improvement into the organization's operations, making quality a core aspect of the healthcare facility's culture.

Linking Quality with Outcomes: By coordinating internal support, healthcare quality professionals ensure that quality improvement activities are directly linked to patient outcomes, regulatory compliance, and overall organizational performance.

Explanation: When selecting a clinical data management software system to support performance improvement, the first step is to align the selection process with the organization’s strategic objectives. According to NAHQ CPHQ study materials, effective performance improvement requires that technology investments directly support organizational goals, such as improving quality, efficiency, or patient outcomes. Defining the organization’s goals for the system—such as enhancing data analytics, streamlining reporting, or supporting specific quality metrics—provides a clear framework for evaluating software options. This ensures the system meets the organization’s specific needs and aligns with its quality improvement priorities. While cost (B), end users’ feedback (C), and integration with existing systems (D) are important, they are secondary to establishing the system’s purpose.

Improving compliance with a corrective action plan requires identifying why the plan is not being followed, which involves analyzing root causes of non-compliance.

Option A (Determine areas of non-compliance through a root cause analysis): This is the correct answer. The NAHQ CPHQ study guide states, “Root cause analysis (RCA) is used to identify underlying reasons for non-compliance with action plans, enabling targeted interventions to improve adherence” (Domain 1). RCA helps pinpoint barriers like training gaps or process issues.

Option B (Determine if the action plan is in compliance with the national standards): Verifying standards is important but does not address current non-compliance issues.

Option C (Provide an analysis for the Patient Safety Committee): Analysis for a committee is a later step after identifying causes of non-compliance.

Option D (Provide disciplinary action to non-compliant departments): Disciplinary action is punitive and undermines a safety culture, not a QI approach.

CPHQ Objective Reference: Domain 1: Patient Safety, Objective 1.5, “Use root cause analysis to address compliance issues,” emphasizes RCA for non-compliance. The NAHQ study guide notes, “RCA is a key tool for improving adherence to corrective action plans” (Domain 1).

Rationale: RCA identifies barriers to compliance, enabling effective solutions, as per CPHQ’s patient safety principles.