CPHQ exam strikes pre-emptively
Watch for more questions on case management
Those who plan to take the 1998 Certified Professional in Healthcare Quality (CPHQ) examination that they should be prepared for questions that reflect managed care’s increasing influence on the hospital quality environment.
"When the Healthcare Quality Certification Board expert committee designed its survey instrument to gauge the job of the quality professional, its members felt more emphasis should be on managed care next year," says Jan Maronde, RN, CPHQ, executive director of HQCB in San Gabriel, CA. "We added or changed several tasks on the survey. For one thing, we listed separately resource case management and clinical case management."
Resource case management deals with financial issues and identification of available resources for patients, such as alternative settings, home health vs. nursing home, and so on. It looks at the most cost-effective way to deliver care. Clinical case management focuses on patient treatment, particularly in terms of pre- and post-acute care, such as preventive teaching, posthospital follow-up, and so on.
"When respondents returned the surveys with the job ratings," continues Maronde, "all the tasks having to do with case management stayed in. None were eliminated, meaning that responders considered all to be significant. What this means is that there’ll be more emphasis on case management in 1998 than in previous exams." No matter what their managed care penetration, hospitals are using the case management model more than ever.
"This trend has evolved over the past few years," explains Maronde. "The last three years’ exams included case management, but the ones previous to those had none or very little. CPHQ does not bill itself as a case management exam. It’s considered to be the Renaissance exam an umbrella encompassing all those areas important to QM."
The major focus of the exam is still performance improvement management, leadership, education, and training. About a third of the 1998 exam will continue to be on performance and information management, and case management falls within those areas.
The only way to publish outcomes results, look at best practices, and benchmark with other facilities is to have good, valid data, know what it means, and have people working for you who can understand how to collect and interpret it. "Information management has increased to 26% of the exam for 1998. Quality management is the exam’s overall emphasis," explains Maronde, "encompassing data analysis, performance improvement, case management, risk management, and utilization management. There will be a lot of questions on teams and cost-benefit analyses. The 1997 exam also contained a lot of questions on information and data management because to survive, institutions must be data-driven. They must have good data upon which to base decisions."
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