Certified Healthcare Technology Manager CHTM Practice Test: 20 Free Questions with Answers

Twenty questions in the exam's domain weights, each with its answer and the reason. The full course has 324 explained questions plus generated math items, scored tests in the real exam's format, and lessons built from what you miss.

1. A clinical director asks you to fund a $4,100 replacement vital signs monitor, which clears the hospital's capitalization threshold. Which budget does the request belong in and who approves it?

   1. The operating budget, approved by the manager
   2. The capital budget, approved by the capital committee and senior leadership
   3. The operating budget, approved by finance as an exception
   4. The clinical department's supply budget
   Show the answer

   Answer: B. An item with a long useful life whose price clears the capitalization threshold is capital. Capital money is rationed across the whole hospital, so the capital or technology committee and senior leadership approve it, not the department manager.

   From the lesson How Hospital Money Is Organized: Operating and Capital Budgets, Cost Centers, the Fiscal Year.

2. A technician buys a $900 pump board and the requisition posts it to a generic supplies account rather than to the device's cost center. Which consequence matters MOST to the manager?

   1. The invoice will be paid late
   2. The purchase order will need a second approval, because a generic supplies account is capped at a lower signing limit
   3. The device's cost history understates the true cost, so the replacement decision rests on a false number
   4. The part will not be covered by warranty, because the vendor matches warranty claims to the cost center on the order
   Show the answer

   Answer: C. Miscoding corrupts the asset's cost history, prevents the clinical cost center from being charged, and makes the cost of service ratio for that model impossible to calculate, which removes the evidence a contract review needs.

   From the lesson The HTM General Ledger: Supplies, Payroll, Parts, Consumables, Contracts, Training.

3. A monthly report shows maintenance and repairs budgeted at $12,000 with actual spending of $14,400. What is the variance and its percent?

   1. $2,400 favorable, 20 percent
   2. $26,400 unfavorable, 120 percent
   3. $2,400 unfavorable, 16.7 percent
   4. $2,400 unfavorable, 20 percent
   Show the answer

   Answer: D. Variance is actual minus budget: 14,400 minus 12,000 is 2,400. Percent is variance divided by budget: 2,400 / 12,000 x 100 is 20 percent. On an expense line, over budget is unfavorable.

   From the lesson Budget Reports and Variance: Reading the Monthly Report and Explaining the Gap.

4. A $1,000,000 system has a ten-year useful life and no salvage value. Using straight-line depreciation, what is its book value after three years?

   1. $700,000
   2. $1,000,000
   3. $300,000
   4. $100,000
   Show the answer

   Answer: A. Straight-line depreciation is (cost minus salvage) / useful life, which is 100,000 a year. Book value is cost minus accumulated depreciation, so after three years it is 1,000,000 minus 300,000.

   From the lesson Financial Statements: Balance Sheet, Income Statement, Depreciation, GAAP, Accounts Payable and Receivable.

5. The risk manager asks for the department's top five risks by Friday. Which document should already exist to answer that in minutes?

   1. The preventive maintenance schedule
   2. The risk register, with a statement, category, likelihood, consequence, score, controls, owner, action, and dates per line
   3. The equipment inventory report, sorted by failure count, with the five models with the most corrective work orders highlighted
   4. Last year's survey findings, with the corrective actions and their close-out dates, since those are the risks the accreditor named
   Show the answer

   Answer: B. A risk register is one maintained list carrying the statement, category, likelihood and consequence, score, existing controls, a named owner, an action with a date, and a review date. Without owners and dates it is a list of complaints.

   From the lesson Identifying and Evaluating Risk: Patient Safety, Operations, Financial, Emergency Preparedness, Regulatory.

6. A surveyor asks why identical pumps are inspected annually when the manual says every six months. What is the only acceptable answer?

   1. The department has always used that interval
   2. The manufacturer's interval is only a recommendation, and the hospital may set any interval its staffing allows
   3. A documented, risk-based decision made by qualified personnel, with the evidence on file
   4. The pumps are low risk because they rarely fail, which the technicians confirmed from their own experience
   Show the answer

   Answer: C. Any change away from the manufacturer's recommendations must sit inside a documented alternative program, decided by qualified personnel on a risk assessment, with the methodology and the evidence per equipment type on file.

   From the lesson Risk Scoring and the Maintenance Strategy It Drives.

7. Three wrong-concentration infusion events occurred this year. Which control should be recommended FIRST?

   1. Retrain the nursing staff on the affected units
   2. Issue a memo to all clinical directors
   3. Add a policy requiring a second-person check
   4. Configure hard concentration limits in the drug library on every pump that supports them
   Show the answer

   Answer: D. Work the hierarchy from the top: eliminate, substitute, engineer, administer, protect. An engineering control such as a hard limit works whether or not anyone is paying attention, while administrative controls hold only while attention lasts.

   From the lesson Recommending Controls: Processes, Procedures, and Policies That Mitigate Risk.

8. Three calls are waiting: a ventilator in use on a patient, a warming cabinet in a clinic, and an infusion pump on a unit that has two spares in place. What is the FIRST step?

   1. Assign them in the order they were received, since first-come first-served is the only method every caller will accept as fair and it needs no judgment
   2. Assign a ventilator call first, because triage is by clinical impact rather than by the order calls arrived
   3. Send one technician to each call so all three units see a response
   4. Ask the three callers to agree among themselves which is most urgent
   Show the answer

   Answer: B. Triage ranks work by clinical impact and urgency, never by arrival order. A life-support device in use outranks a convenience item, and a device with a spare already in place can wait.

   From the lesson Work Order Flow From Request to Closure, and Customer Satisfaction.

9. A surveyor counts twenty-two ventilators on a unit while your inventory lists nineteen. The three extra arrived last month under a rental agreement. Why is this a finding?

   1. Rental equipment requires a separate agreement with the accreditor naming each device, its rental company, and the dates it will be on site, filed before delivery
   2. Purchasing should not have signed a rental agreement
   3. The inventory must cover every medical device in the building regardless of ownership and regardless of who maintains it
   4. Rental devices must be purchased within thirty days
   Show the answer

   Answer: C. Ownership decides who pays, not who is accountable. Owned, leased, rented, borrowed, loaned, trial, and physician-owned devices all appear in the inventory, with who maintains each one and the evidence that it happened.

   From the lesson CMMS Documentation Regardless of Ownership: Inventory, Parts, History, Recalls, End of Life.

10. In one month 412 scheduled maintenance jobs were due, 371 were completed and documented, 18 were deferred with a reason, and 23 devices could not be located. What is the completion rate?

    1. 94.4 percent
    2. 97.4 percent
    3. 85.4 percent
    4. 90.0 percent
    Show the answer

    Answer: D. Completion rate is completed divided by due times 100, so 371 / 412 x 100 is 90.0 percent. Neither deferred work nor devices that could not be located counts as complete.

    From the lesson PM Scheduling, Completion Rates, and the Compliance Report.

11. Leadership wants one measure that reflects what a clinician actually experiences when a device fails. Which is the MOST appropriate to report?

    1. Total time to repair, from the call until the device is back in service
    2. Mean time to repair, the average hands-on repair time
    3. Work orders closed per technician
    4. The scheduled maintenance completion rate
    Show the answer

    Answer: A. Total time to repair includes waiting for parts, vendors, and access to the room, which is the whole wait the unit feels. Mean time to repair measures only the technician and the parts supply and is always the shorter number.

    From the lesson Performance Data and KPIs: Productivity, Staffing, Competency, Cost Reduction.

12. A device cost $400,000 and the hospital spends $44,000 a year to keep it running. What is its cost of service ratio?

    1. 9.1 percent
    2. 11.0 percent
    3. 4.4 percent
    4. 1.1 percent
    Show the answer

    Answer: B. The ratio is annual service cost divided by original acquisition cost times 100, so 44,000 / 400,000 x 100 is 11 percent. Both numbers should already be in the inventory and the work order history.

    From the lesson The Cost of Service Ratio and Benchmarking.

13. Your workload build totals 6,782 annual hours and a position delivers 1,560 productive hours after leave, holidays, training, and daily lost time. How many positions does the work require?

    1. 3.3
    2. 5.2
    3. 4.3
    4. 2.9
    Show the answer

    Answer: C. 6,782 divided by 1,560 is 4.3 positions. Dividing by the 2,080 paid hours in a full-time position instead would have returned 3.3 and understated the requirement by a whole person.

    From the lesson Staffing and Scheduling Requirements.

14. An instrument is returned from calibration marked out of tolerance. What must your written procedure require FIRST?

    1. Replace the instrument and continue the month's work
    2. Recalibrate the instrument and return it to service, logging the as-found error against the certificate so the next calibration interval can be shortened
    3. Notify the accrediting organization of the lapse
    4. Quarantine the instrument and identify every record it produced since its last good certificate, then assess the clinical risk
    Show the answer

    Answer: D. A reading taken with an out-of-tolerance instrument casts doubt on the record it produced, which can mean re-testing a fleet. The procedure quarantines the instrument, identifies the affected records, assesses risk, re-tests what must be re-tested, and reports.

    From the lesson Resources: PPE, Tools, Test Equipment, Supplies, Technical Information.

15. The work order system was restored from a backup nobody had ever tested, and eleven days of records were lost. What is the MOST appropriate preventive action?

    1. Put a scheduled restore test in the calendar, perform it, and document the result for every system you depend on
    2. Move the backup to a different storage provider
    3. Increase the backup frequency to twice daily
    4. Ask the vendor to confirm in writing that backups are running, with a monthly report of successful backup jobs attached to the support contract
    Show the answer

    Answer: A. A backup nobody has restored is a hope rather than a plan. Each system needs a frequency, a copy held away from the machine it protects, an allowed restore time, an acceptable data loss, and a documented restore test.

    From the lesson Electronic Data Management of Computerized Assets: Backups, Security, Patching, Updates.

16. Four technicians have asked for service schools and your education line holds $21,000. One of the four is a refresher an accreditation checklist requires. How should the four be ranked?

    1. By the seniority of the technician asking, which is the fairest method
    2. The required refresher first and without being scored on return at all, then single points of failure, then the shortest paybacks
    3. Strictly by payback period, shortest first, with the required refresher scored on its return like any other course and dropped if it does not pay back
    4. By the size of the fleet each course covers
    Show the answer

    Answer: B. Training a regulator, a license, or an accreditation checklist requires is not optional and is not justified on return. Everything else is ranked below it: first the courses that remove a single point of failure, then the shortest paybacks, then items with no cash return that still move a reported number.

    From the lesson Analyzing Training Needs: Cost, ROI, Competency, Operations, Inventory.

17. Six months after a $21,000 pump school your director asks what the hospital got, and you find that nobody recorded the fleet's repeat repairs or repair times before anyone traveled. What has that cost you?

    1. Nothing, since the current figures can be compared with the national average for the model and the vendor's published repair-time benchmarks
    2. The warranty on the training provided
    3. The ability to prove the result, because a baseline reconstructed afterwards is an argument rather than evidence
    4. The competency records for the two technicians
    Show the answer

    Answer: C. Effectiveness is measured as a before-and-after on data you already collect, which means the baseline has to be captured before the first person leaves. Afterwards you can only estimate what the position used to be.

    From the lesson Measuring Training Effectiveness: Failure Rates, Total Time to Repair, Competencies, User Satisfaction.

18. Your strongest technician resigns and tells you in the exit conversation that he left because there was nowhere to go: one title, one grade, nothing above it. What management failure is that?

    1. No ladder of job descriptions and pay grades was ever written, so no promotion was possible
    2. A recruitment failure, since he was overqualified when hired
    3. A compensation failure, since the pay range for the single grade was too narrow to reward him for staying
    4. A retention failure caused by the hospital's hiring freeze
    Show the answer

    Answer: A. Nobody can be promoted into a job that does not exist. If the department holds a single description, the only career move available to a good technician is to leave, and replacing him is estimated to cost more than 1.5 times his annual salary.

    From the lesson Job Descriptions, Selection, Retention, and Termination.

19. The annual evaluation is due on Friday and you are about to write down three criticisms the technician has never heard. What is wrong with that?

    1. The criticisms should be delivered verbally instead
    2. Nothing should be new in an annual review, because providing feedback through the year is the manager's job
    3. Three criticisms is too many for one review cycle
    4. The criticisms should be raised with human resources first, so the review can cite them with HR's agreement already on record
    Show the answer

    Answer: B. The review is a summary of ground both people have covered together during the year. New information delivered there turns the meeting into a defense and makes any agreement about the next period almost impossible.

    From the lesson Performance Evaluations: Compensation, Organizational Values, Engagement.

20. A technician tells you she wants to move into imaging, where you currently have one specialist and no backup. What is the BEST response?

    1. Tell her to apply when an imaging vacancy is posted
    2. Promise her the next imaging course that becomes available and have the imaging specialist start showing her the fleet between calls
    3. Write a development plan with the goal, the gap, the training, its cost and budget year, protected time, and a review date
    4. Advise her to obtain the training at her own expense first
    Show the answer

    Answer: C. A development plan is what makes the answer real: dates on every step, a budget line for anything that costs money, and protected hours for the steps that do not. It also closes the single-holder gap on a fleet where a vendor visit is the only alternative.

    From the lesson Development Plans, Competency Assessment, Certification, and Recommendations to Human Resources.