CMDP study guide
CMDP · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
The Certified Medical Data Professional (CMDP) is an independent credential intended for people who work with clinical and administrative healthcare data - data analysts and stewards in provider or payer organizations, clinical informatics staff, health information management professionals moving into analytics, and quality or research data coordinators. It signals that a holder can govern medical data responsibly, apply standard terminologies correctly, and turn messy clinical records into trustworthy reporting. The CMDP study guide has 8 sections and about 2,472 words.
01Healthcare Data Governance and Stewardship
Data governance is the decision-rights and accountability framework for data: who can define, approve, change, and access it. Stewardship is the operational execution of those decisions by named individuals (data owners hold accountability; data stewards handle day-to-day quality, definitions, and issue resolution).
335 words, about 2 min02Medical Data Standards and Terminologies
Terminologies (vocabularies) describe meaning: SNOMED CT for clinical findings and procedures, LOINC for laboratory and clinical observations, ICD-10-CM for morbidity/billing diagnosis coding, RxNorm for medications, CPT/HCPCS for procedures and billing, and UMLS as a metathesaurus linking them. Messaging and exchange standards describe structure and transport: HL7 v2, HL7 FHIR, and previously CDA.
314 words, about 2 min03Data Quality, Integrity, and Validation
Classic data quality dimensions: completeness, accuracy, timeliness, consistency, validity, and uniqueness. In healthcare, add plausibility and conformance to clinical rules.
327 words, about 2 min04Privacy, Security, and Regulatory Compliance
HIPAA Privacy Rule governs use and disclosure of protected health information (PHI); the Security Rule covers administrative, physical, and technical safeguards for electronic PHI; the Breach Notification Rule sets notification duties. HITECH strengthened enforcement and extended obligations to business associates.
316 words, about 2 min05Clinical Data Management and Documentation
Clinical documentation captures care in the legal medical record. Understand the components: problem list, medication list, allergies, progress notes, orders, results, and the audit trail.
304 words, about 2 min06Data Analytics, Reporting, and Visualization
Analytics in healthcare spans descriptive (what happened), diagnostic (why), predictive (what will happen), and prescriptive (what to do). Start with the decision the analysis supports, then choose measures.
299 words, about 1 min07Interoperability and Health Information Exchange
Interoperability levels: syntactic (format), semantic (shared meaning), and organizational (workflow and policy). Know the exchange patterns: push (directed send), pull/query (e.g., a query for records), and publish/subscribe.
289 words, about 1 min08Data Lifecycle, Architecture, and Storage
Plan, capture, store, use/share, archive, and dispose. Each stage has governance obligations: retention schedules, legal hold, and defensible disposition.
288 words, about 1 min