CompTIA Healthcare IT

Explore how the health care IT exam works, and examine the high tech act and its impact on health care in America.

Define health care it as the personnel, equipment, and procedures supporting computer systems in care settings. Explore the high tech act, EMR, and EHR, and related electronic records.

Explore the types of health care facilities, from acute and long-term care to ambulatory settings. See how hospitals coordinate departments like surgery, radiology, and emergency care.

Explore hospital patient flow from inpatient admittance to discharge, including registration, patient census, medical records, emergency department tracking board and triage with acuity levels 1–5.

Explore how health care IT goals bridge the IT and health care worlds, advocate for clinicians with patient room computers, and prepare for the CompTIA health care IT technician certification.

Take a tour of the healthcareit.gov site to explore electronic health records benefits, implementation steps, incentive programs, and resources that support improved care coordination and patient participation.

Explore the CompTIA health care IT technician exam on the vendor-neutral site, covering 75 questions in 60 minutes, passing 650/900, HIT-001, with objectives and sample questions.

Explore how medical information systems communicate by using interfaces to move data, and how these interfaces operate to enable data flow in health IT.

Explore how data flows between hospital information systems and how support flow shifts with facility size, from vendor help in small systems to health information exchanges.

Explore hospital information systems, including the EMR (electronic medical record) that holds patient records, and systems for lab, radiology, surgery, and pharmacy, unified by the hospital information system.

The hospital information system manages patient registration, centralizes patient records, supports order entry for procedures and medications, handles charges and billing, schedules procedures, and maintains the master patient index.

Explore the master patient index, detailing MRNs and account numbers used for patient care across visits. Recognize the protected data fields and the need to safeguard this information.

Discover how HL7 standardizes messages for patient data exchange, including ack, adt, order, and mfn types, and how an interface engine forwards, filters, translates, and queues these messages.

Identify three sources of adt messages, such as registration and emergency department, and explain how the interface engine uses the master patient index to send notifications.

Explore how the perioperative information system coordinates preoperative, intraoperative, and postoperative data via the interface engine. Track identity from temporary to permanent accounts, ADT messaging, and cold feed to EMR.

Explain how the pharmacy information system processes medication orders, uses medical administration records and electronic medication administration records, and updates emr and billing via the interface engine, with barcode scanning.

Discover how the radiology information system orchestrates orders, imaging, charges, transcription, and final reports across the interface engine, HIS, EHR, EMR, and physician portals.

Follow how a lab information system coordinates orders, specimen collection, and results across the his, blood bank, pathology, remote labs, and emr through the interface engine.

Explain how the emergency department information system works with HIS to assign order numbers, route orders to pharmacy, lab, or radiology, and return results and charges via the interface engine.

Explore major regulations and pieces of legislation shaping the U.S. health care industry. Learn how regulatory requirements impact health care operations and compliance in this module.

Identify the agencies governing healthcare, including Department of Health and Human Services and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and examine HIPAA rules and the transition to electronic records.

Discover the operating divisions of health and human services and how CMS, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, and the Office for Civil Rights influence health care.

Discover how CMS regulates billing code standards under HIPAA 5010, and how ICD-10 replaces ICD-9 to support more detailed codes and about 55,000 additional entries.

Discover how the office of the national coordinator guides health IT under the high tech act, certifies EMR/EHR solutions for HIPAA compliance, and links vendor certification to monetary incentives.

Protect patient records and enforce HIPAA privacy and security rules through the Office for Civil Rights. Drive health care innovation and accelerated research and development with NIST to strengthen security.

Explore Medicare and Medicaid programs, their federal administration and 1965 Social Security Act origins, and the concept of electronic protected health information (e-PHI) under HIPAA, including privacy enforcement.

HIPAA sets privacy and security standards to protect health information and enforces breach notifications with penalties. American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds incentives for meaningful use of EMR/EHR under HITECH.

Understand HIPAA controls and OCR enforcement, penalties for violations, and how confidentiality, integrity, and availability shape health information security, plus record retention and disposal rules.

Learn how to safeguard PHI through key legal documents, including waivers of liability, BAAs, SLAs, and MOUs, and ensure third parties accessing electronic health information have proper agreements.

Explore the health and human services website (hhs.gov) to view its 11 operating divisions, with details on leadership, budgets, and laws like the hipaa privacy rule and high tech act.

Explore cms.gov to navigate HIPAA transaction standards, including 5010 of the X12 standards, transaction and code sets, ICD ten codes, and the Office of Civil Rights resources.

Explore the HIPAA privacy and security rules on hhs.gov, including who is covered and what PHI is protected, and protect confidentiality, integrity, and availability while guarding against reasonably anticipated threats.

Explore how organizational behavior in health care impacts protecting patients' PHI and identify practical steps to ensure PHI protection.

Protect patient data by implementing HIPAA-aligned physical and technical safeguards, giving PHI access on a need-to-know basis, and following ten practices like strong passwords, antivirus, firewalls, access controls, and backups.

Implement physical safeguards with privacy screens and coded patient tracking to protect PHI. Employ unique logins, automatic locks, and secure printers and cables to promote security.

Adopt encrypted email practices, ensure usernames and passwords are sent separately or out-of-band, and use secure chat with encryption and EMR messaging for auditable health information.

Explore PBX and VoIP infrastructure, comparing internal calls that stay within the facility to external calls over the internet, and learn about VLAN segmentation to improve security and reliability.

Discover how healthcare IT defines access levels for roles, from doctors and nurses to office managers, and how IT staff must protect patient information.

Identify the key technical roles in healthcare IT, including system, security, network, database, and desktop support administrators, along with their responsibilities, required certifications, and secure third-party access practices.

Learn how role-based access control provides minimum necessary access, manage break-the-glass emergencies with a security administrator and CFO approval, and apply sensitivity labels with audit trails for controlled data access.

Explore the hospital's governance from the board of directors to the CEO and VPs, overseeing patient care services, risk management, quality review, social services, finance, marketing, development, and provider contracts.

Explore private practices, where doctors work outside hospitals or contract with hospital facilities, and examine other care settings like assisted living, surgical centers, home health care, and hospice programs.

Execute daily healthcare IT tasks by practicing attentive listening, clear language, and respectful body language, then schedule downtime, obtain permission, test changes, and verify user understanding.

Enter patient rooms with permission, knock, announce yourself, and wait for a reply. Verbally explain your purpose, follow established protocols, and be mindful of sensitive conditions to avoid insensitivity.

Keep the recovery room quiet to support patient rest and follow clothing requirements. In imaging and exam areas, ask before entry, avoid metal, and practice hand hygiene and masks.

Explore health information privacy and security with a HealthIT.gov game that tests cybersecurity decisions. Learn to protect PHI by using secure channels over unencrypted email and try the contingency planning game.

Explore information technology principles essential for healthcare IT operations, building a strong grasp of IT concepts to operate successfully in healthcare environments.

Learn essential information technology operations concepts, including internet service providers, wide area network connections, T1 and T3 bandwidth, and fiber optic networks used inside facilities.

Explore the OSI model from application to physical layer, packet encapsulation and decapsulation, and how TCP/IP maps to OSI with protocols such as HTTP, FTP, DNS, and RDP.

Identify ports as software identifiers and how port numbers target services on devices. Explain TCP's delivery guarantee, UDP's non guaranteed delivery, and DNS resolution with IPv4/IPv6 and common ports.

Explains how MAC addresses function in the data link layer within an IP subnet (LAN), and how ARP resolves destination IP to the next-hop MAC address.

Explore Wi-Fi standards used in health care facilities, including the 2.4 and 5 GHz bands, access points, and typical speeds and ranges across 802.11 variants.

Explore mainframes and their reliable, high-capacity servers with hot swappable components, print servers, and learn how domain controllers and Active Directory enable single sign on and domain authentication.

Discover cloud computing and virtualization, including IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS, with remote applications accessed via a browser. Learn how virtualization runs multiple virtual machines on one hardware device.

Explore essential programming languages such as SQL for databases, HTML and its extension xHTML, PHP, and ASP, plus APIs and multimedia plugins like Adobe Flash.

Explore ad hoc and infrastructure WLAN topologies, including access points and SSIDs, and how site surveys guide AP placement, considering building materials, and WEP to WPA2 and Radius authentication.

Learn how routers operate at layer 3 to separate subnets and route traffic, use network address translation to map private to public IPs, and apply DHCP and port forwarding.

Configure a client's IP configuration by setting the IP address, subnet mask, default gateway, and DNS server, and learn why these items are required and how DHCP configures them.

Explore how layer two switches connect devices on the same IP network and forward frames by MAC addresses, and understand how an internet modem bridges your network to the internet.

Learn essential network tools for troubleshooting, including ipconfig, ipconfig /release, ipconfig /renew, ping, and traceroute. Identify issues like duplicate IPs, broken cables, crosstalk, and wireless interference that affect connectivity.

Learn hospital power outlet colors, including white/ivory/brown regular outlets, orange hospital-grade outlets with isolated grounds for noise-sensitive equipment, and red emergency generator outlets that reconnect when the generator kicks in.

Compare EHR and EMR information systems by examining locally hosted versus remotely hosted deployments, including thick and thin clients, terminal services, and vendor-hosted ASP models.

Identify security risks and prevent cross-database access by using an interface engine, while managing load with processor affinity, balancing servers, applying patches, and purging logs to avoid disk fill.

Explore daily, differential, and incremental backups, how the archive bit affects them, and how to restore using the last full backup plus the appropriate differential or incremental tapes.

Deploying workstations requires validating model specs and documenting serial numbers, operating system version, IP and MAC addresses, installed apps, printers, and antivirus; use disk imaging, consistent naming, and server-backed backups.

Learn to manage operating system updates safely by testing before deployment to a subset of devices. Troubleshoot common issues with mice, monitors, and printers by checking connections, drivers, and power.

Explain how network device setting changes follow a change management process and are documented with device name, model, and location, including users affected, testing, rollback, and approval.

Explore peripheral devices in health care, such as barcode scanners, document scanners, card or badge scanners, cameras, signature pads, and removable storage options for backups.

Learn to use ipconfig and ping to diagnose connectivity, view ip configuration, dhcp details, and dns servers, and configure ipv4 settings from manual ip to dhcp on the ethernet adapter.

Explore how medical business operations function in hospitals and healthcare facilities to enable successful health care delivery.

Learn hospital business operations, medical terms, imaging and tests, and how to translate between medical and IT terminology for healthcare IT professionals pursuing CompTIA Health Care IT certification.

Explore the five schedules of controlled substances, from schedule one with no medical use to schedule five with very low abuse risk, with examples like heroin, morphine, and diazepam.

Understand how trauma centers are classified by levels, guiding equipment, specialists, and hours. Learn the distinctions among level one through level five, including transfer protocols and off-hours readiness.

Explore essential medical imaging terms and testing methods, including portable x-ray, ultrasound, CT, MRI, and PET imaging. Understand glucose monitoring, EEG and ECG, and vascular and nuclear stress tests.

Navigate inpatient hospital departments, including obstetrics and gynecology, labor and delivery, postpartum, neonatal intensive care unit, pediatrics, oncology, intensive care unit, transitional care unit, medical-surgical nursing, and the operating room.

Explore the outpatient hospital landscape, from obstetrics and gynecology to pediatrics, oncology, ENT, dermatology, and cardiovascular outpatient care, plus ambulatory day surgery and rehabilitation services that support diagnosis and treatment.

Describe clinical workflows, patient identifiers, and medical record numbers, including examinations, consultations, and referrals, and explain how computerized physician order entry, voice recognition, and electronic signatures ensure accurate patient records.

Learn about healthcare IT software types—scheduling, patient tracking, and RFID—and e-prescribing with NDC; explore practice management, billing, CPT and E/M codes, super bills, and auditing of access to records.

Explore imaging formats and standards, including DICOM with patient-linked DCM files, PACS for storage, and common formats like TIFF, PDFs, and JPEG, plus OCR, metadata, and documentation types.

Master the change control and change management process, with advisory board approvals and staged testing from development to production; own and escalate support requests to the right team.

Learn how systems exchange health data via HL seven messages, using continuity of care documents and interface engines to monitor bi-directional threads and segment structures (fields and subfields).

Identify common interface issues in health IT, such as thread deactivations, interface engine problems, node activation gaps, and data formatting errors that disrupt HL7 messages between applications and destination systems.

Experience a Practice Fusion EHR demo dashboard that lets you add users, connect labs and imaging centers, manage billing and super bills, secure messaging, scheduling, patient charts, and reports.

Learn how HIPAA mandates protecting personal information and implement security measures to keep your network secure. Protect patient data and ensure it remains secure through final chapter guidance on security.

Explore security challenges in healthcare IT, including social engineering, phishing, malware, and spyware, and learn mitigations like spam filters and user education to protect patient data under HIPAA.

CompTIA Healthcare IT course notes access control and permissions through authentication and authorization, emphasizing two-factor authentication with two different factor types, and read, write, modify, and full access rights.

Secure infrastructure by locating servers in a locked data center or secure closet with emergency power and off-site backups, and keep main and intermediate distribution frames in locked data closets.

Secure resources with physical authentication methods such as key fobs, badges, magnetic strips, and biometric scanners, synchronized with authentication servers to validate access in healthcare.

Protect the environment around devices to safeguard availability and security by maintaining 64–80°F temperatures, 30–55% humidity, robust HVAC, surveillance cameras, security lighting, automated fire suppression, and on-site generators.

Avoid writing down or sharing passwords; change defaults, enforce unique accounts, securely deliver resets, expire first login, and apply Active Directory policies for complex, non-reusable passwords.

Discover common encryption types, including symmetric encryption with the same key and asymmetric encryption with related keys, plus ssl, des, triple des, and pretty good privacy for email.

Learn secure communication practices for healthcare IT, including encrypting email, avoiding unencrypted chat, using secure EHR messaging, intranet collaboration sites, secure FTP, and smartphone and fax security.

Protect data privacy on storage by encrypting where needed, while keeping access fast and avoiding encryption choices that degrade performance or waste space.

Review storage types, from flash drives and sd cards to encrypted drives and laptops with password protection, timeouts, and power-on passwords; compare nas over tcp/ip and san over fibre channel.

Compare WEP, WPA, and WPA2, emphasizing AES and FIPS compliance for healthcare wireless security, with RADIUS authentication and site surveys to detect rogue apps.

Compare remote access options, including remote desktop connections, a VPN, third-party remote control apps, terminal emulation, and L2TPv3 with IPsec, plus secure protocols like SSH, HTTPS, and Secure FTP.

Develop a backup plan that accounts for downtime and maximum tolerable downtime, store media offsite, use HIPAA-compliant couriers in locked bags, and monitor and replace media before its lifetime ends.

Ensure hipaa compliant phi disposal as a covered entity; shred physical documents, purge or degauss storage devices, and sanitize by deleting data and reformatting the drive.