Ace the 2025 CPHRM Challenge – Rock Your Health Care Risk Management Skills!

A hospital-acquired condition (HAC) is defined as a high-cost, high-volume condition that could be prevented. This definition emphasizes the significance of HACs as conditions that occur during a patient's stay in a hospital and could be avoided if proper care practices were in place. CMS, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, categorizes these conditions not just based on their prevalence and potential to contribute to increased healthcare costs, but also on their preventability through adherence to established clinical guidelines and protocols.

The focus on "high-cost" and "high-volume" conditions speaks to the impact these HACs can have on healthcare systems, both financially and in terms of patient outcomes, highlighting the importance of proactive risk management strategies in healthcare settings to minimize their occurrence. This understanding sits at the core of initiatives aimed at quality improvement and patient safety in hospitals.

Other options do not align with the widely accepted definition of HACs. For instance, being benign and easy to treat does not define the nature of an HAC, and identifying conditions through historical patient data lacks the emphasis on their preventability. Additionally, while surgical interventions may be necessary for some conditions, defining HACs in terms of requiring surgery detracts from the broader understanding of these conditions and their varied implications.