Reddit reviews CompTIA Healthcare IT Technician HIT-001 Cert Guide (Cert Guides)

I passed HealthIT early this year and wrote a good bit of advice. It is based around the Joy Dark book. Sorry if this reprints as a wall of text. I am pasting from a message. I would add that the CompTIA test is not really that meaningful professionally. Instead you should aim to do the CAHIMS cert here:

http://www.himss.org/health-it-certification/cahims


As for the CompTIA Health IT exam (HIT-001), I used:

ISBN-13: 978-0789749291

CompTIA Healthcare IT Technician HIT-001 Cert Guide

by Joy Dark, published by Pearson Certification.

http://www.amazon.com/CompTIA-Healthcare-Technician-HIT-001-Guide/dp/0789749297


It is around 380 pages of prose (the rest is glossary and index,) and is a solid solution for tying together the core sets of knowledge that are on the HIT-001 exam. It has an added benefit of being well written and organized. Unfortunately it is often a bit too sparse when it should focus and elaborate on a topic. A more complete edition could easily add 200 pages. The book also contained a CD that has a few study tools on it, including a printable "cheat sheet" study guide.

The book includes a coupon for the digital version with an addition set of practice questions as well. I paid for and studied those questions and did learn a little bit more from them, but the majority of them were not helpful so I can't give a blanket recommendation for paying for the additional content. However, at the time it was quite inexpensive, I think I paid $10 after the coupon.

CompTIA suggests the A+ as a pre-requisite for the HIT-001, and this book does not cover the content from the A+ in enough detail to stand alone. You should get an A+ study guide as well if you are not confident in that matterial. If you have taken security+ and networking+ you will also benefit, but this book and the accompanying practice questions are enough to get you a pass for the content from those higher level IT exams.

The best way to use this book is as a tie in for all of the different content areas that form the HIT-001. It won't give you mastery of any of them, but it will give you an excellent idea of how the test will approach them AND to what degree you should prepare for all of the content areas. If you wish to guarantee success, then you should also expect to do a bit of extra reading. This guide is to give you a pretty good idea of just how much you need do.

Having taken the test, I suggest the following:

1 First thing you should do is be comfortable with the A+ content, particularly A+ level of networking, security, and hardware/system setup content. If you are at the level of STRATA, the book may be enough to pull you up, but you will certainly miss questions on the test.

2 Go to Wikipedia, print the articles "HIPAA", "HL7", "HITECH act", "OSI Model" These four topics (especially the first two) represent several questions on the exam, and are not discussed at length in the book. Reading the Wiki's will help cement the information.

3 Start reading this book. ANY term/acronym you do not understand must be memorized. Pay special attention to the first 2 chapters and the last chapter, this is the truly unique part of the HIT-001 exam, and features heavily in the exam. Look through questions at the end of chapters and answer them for extra practice (some are useful, some not.)

4 Go back through the book, and focus on anything contained in a chart, you will likely have questions on them. particularly things such as HL7 meta tags, OSI levels, and the departments of a hospital (and their corresponding IS.)

5 Become comfortable with HIPAA, understand the role of each article, with special emphasis on article 2, and the practicalities of becoming HIPAA compliant, from a technical perspective in a hospital and inter-business setting. Become comfortable identifying what is and isn't a HIPAA violation between hospital employees and businesses, and the role of the IT tech in preventing and responding to violations. Use youtube and google to review a few employee level presentations on the topic, but be careful, many of these have vague and even incorrect points, and are insufficient over all, but, some quesitons on the test were practical or ethical in nature, and empoyee presentations are good for getting an idea of HIPAA case studies.

6 Use the software to study the practice questions until you know them all. This is actually a considerable amount of additional content, and should not be skipped.

7 Go take and pass your test!

In retrospect, I do not think the exam was especially difficult or tricky. It mainly wants to know that you, as an IT technician, have the correct concepts in your head to not make critical errors. This includes not only some technical knowledge, but also an idea of the anatomy of hospitals as business environments and how they use IT to serve their needs.

Part of it would be IF the employer or HR person is aware of the cert. However, just by looking at the objectives, 47% of the test is IT Hardware/Software and Security. Most likley stuff that you would already know if you took the A+/Net+/Sec+. There are two subsections of the IT Hardware (3.2 and 3.10) that deals with EHR/EMR technologies, something I do not recall being covered in A+/Net+.

The rest of the objectives covers things that are most specialized in the healthcare field. Policies, Procedures, and Regulations. It also covers things like how a Hospital may be organized and some medical terminology that some laypeople may not know. Here are a few review questions I pulled from the CompTIA Healthcare IT Technicatin HIT-001 Authorized Cert Guide

>Which branch of the HHS controls the electronic standards of transaction for an insurance claim? And what is the current standard?
>Which HHS division is responsible for enforcing HIPAA rules?
>What does the HIPAA Enforcement Rule determine?
>What are possible breaches of e-PHI?
>Why are SLAs important and what do they establish?

And here are a few practicus exam questions from Healthcare Information Technology Exam Guide for CompTIA Healthcare IT Technician and HIT Pro Certifications

>You are an office manager at a long-term care facility that provides medical services for chronically ill patients. You are responsible for ensuring that patient history and physical examination information for your patients are dictated and transcribed in the appropriate time frame to meet The Joint Commission (TJC), formerly the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO), s standards. What is the appropriate time frame to meet the standard?
>A. 24 hours
>B. 7 days
>C. 14 days
>D. 30 days

>Which of the following is an American National Standards Institute (ANSI)–accredited Standards Developing Organization (SDO) operating in the healthcare arena that develops standards for clinical and administrative data?
>A. CCD
>B. HL7
>C. CCR
>D. CPT


So does it have weight? IDK, but when I applied for an IT Manager position at a small regional hospital last year I looked over the HIT-001 as kind of a starting point to get me going. If anything, having it on your resume/cover letter could help set you apart from the rest of the pool, and give you a leg up when it comes to knowing how some of the medical stuff works. I know FERPA regulations due to my current job, I do not know HIPAA regulations.

This exam no longer exists, but I highly recommend it. Healthcare IT is just like normal IT, but the way you handle data is different. Try this:

https://www.amazon.com/CompTIA-Healthcare-Technician-HIT-001-Guides/dp/0789749297/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1491322087&sr=8-1&keywords=comptia+healthcare

Im using this book. https://www.amazon.com/CompTIA-Healthcare-Technician-HIT-001-Guides/dp/0789749297