BC-TMH Prep Exam Questions And
100% Correct Answers.
Telehealth - Answer A broad term having to do with providing health care services from a distance. A
direct service provided from a distance to clients/patients, consultations to other health care
professionals, education related to health care to clients or other health care professionals, and
coordination of care (helping integrated physical and behavioral health concerns to improve the
outcomes for both, reducing unnecessary readmissions, reducing medication errors, treatment errors,
wrong diagnosis).
Telemental health - Answer Providing psychotherapy directly to a client when the clinician and the
client are not in the same location. Telemental health and mental health services are not separate
services. It is the same service, provided by different means.
Accountable Care Organization (ACO) - Answer A healthcare organization characterized by a payment
and care delivery model that seeks to tie provider reimbursements to quality metrics and reductions in
the total cost of care for an assigned population of patients. (Wikipedia)
Analog - Answer A continuous signal where the time varying variable is represented by another time
varying quantity. It differs from a digital signal where a continuous quantity is represented by a discrete
function that only takes on one of a finite number of values.
Application Service Provider (ASP) - Answer An ASP hosts a variety of applications on a central server.
For a fee, customers can access the applications over secure Internet connections or a private network.
This means that they do not need to purchase, install or maintain the software themselves; instead they
rent the applications they need from the ASP. New releases, such as software upgrades, are generally
included in the price.
Asynchronous - Answer Term describing store and forward transmission of medical images and/or data
because the data transfer takes place over a period of time, and typically in separate time frames. The
transmission typically does not take place simultaneously. This is the opposite of synchronous (see
below).
,Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) - Answer A telecommunications standard to support voice, video
and data communications. The mode uses asynchronous time-division multiplexing and encodes data
into small, fixed-sized cells rather than packets or frames.
Authentication - Answer A method of verifying the identity of a person sending or receiving
information using passwords, keys and other automated identifiers.
Bandwidth - Answer A measure of the information carrying capacity of a communications channel; a
practical limit to the size, cost, and capability of a telemedicine service.
Basic Rate Interface - Answer An ISDN (see below) configuration that provides two bearer (B) channels
at 64 kilobits/second (kbit/s) each and one data (D) channel at 16 kbit/s. B channels are for voice data
and D channels for any combination of data, control/signaling, and X.25 packet networking. B channels
can be aggregated to provide128 kbit/s.
Bits Per Second (bps) - Answer Number of electronic data bits conveyed or processed per unit of time.
Bluetooth Wireless - Answer An industrial specification for wireless personal area networks (PANs) that
provides the means to connect and exchange information between devices such as mobile phones,
laptops, PCs, printers, digital cameras and video game consoles over a secure, globally unlicensed short-
range radio frequency. The specifications are developed and licensed by the Bluetooth Special Interest
Group (http://www.bluetooth.com/Pages/about-bluetooth-sig.aspx).
Bridge - Answer Device for linking multiple videoconferencing sites in a single videoconference session.
It is also often referred to as a multipoint control unit (MCU).
Broadband - Answer Communications (e.g., broadcast television, microwave, and satellite) capable of
carrying a wide range of frequencies; refers to transmission of signals in a frequency-modulated fashion
over a segment of the total bandwidth available, thereby permitting simultaneous transmission of
several messages.
Cascading - Answer Means to accommodate more videoconference participants than using one MCU
by joining another MCU into a session hosted by the primary MCU.
,Certification Commission for Health Information Technology (CCHIT) - Answer Founded in 2004 with
the public mission of accelerating the adoption of health IT, it certifies electronic health records (EHRs)
using comprehensive, practical definitions of what capabilities were needed in these systems.
(http://www.cchit.org/)
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) - Answer A federal agency within the United States
Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) that administers the Medicare program and works in
partnership with state governments to administer Medicaid, the State Children's Health Insurance
Program (SCHIP), and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) standards. (Wikipedia)
Channel Service Unit/Data Service Unit (CSU/DSU) - Answer A digital-interface device for connecting
Data Terminal Equipment devices (DTE) (e.g., router) to a digital circuit (e.g., T1 line). CSU connects to
the network and the DSU handles the DTE interface.
Circuit Switched Network - Answer A method for implementing a telecommunications network where
two nodes have a dedicated communications channel through the network for communication,
guaranteeing full bandwidth for the session.
Class of Service (CoS) - Answer Used in data and voice protocols to differentiate payloads in the
transmitted packets to help assign priorities to the data payload.
Clinical Decision Support System (CCDS) - Answer Systems (usually electronically based and interactive)
that provide clinicians, staff, patients, and other individuals with knowledge and person-specific
information, intelligently filtered and presented at appropriate times, to enhance health and health care.
(http://healthit.ahrq.gov/images/jun09cdsreview/09_0069_ef.html)
Clinical Information System - Answer Hospital-based information system designed to collect and
organize data relating exclusively to information regarding the care of a patient rather than
administrative data. .
Cloud computing - Answer The use of computing resources (hardware and software) that are delivered
as a service over a network (typically the Internet). The name comes from the use of a cloud-shaped
symbol as an abstraction for the complex infrastructure it contains in system diagrams. Cloud computing
entrusts remote services with a user's data, software and computation. (Wikipedia)
, CODEC - Answer Acronym for coder-decoder. This is the videoconferencing device that converts analog
video and audio signals to digital video and audio code and vice versa. CODECs typically compress the
digital code to conserve bandwidth on a telecommunications path.
Compressed video - Answer Video images that have been encoded using fewer bits of information than
the original dataset (either lossless or lossy) to reduce the amount of bandwidth needed to capture the
necessary information so that the information can be sent over a network.
Computer-based Patient Record (CPR) - Answer An electronic form of individual patient information
designed to provide access to complete and accurate patient data.
Data Compression - Answer A method to reduce the volume of data using encoding that results in the
data having fewer bits of information than the original dataset (either lossless or lossy) to reduce image
processing, transmission times, bandwidth requirements, and storage requirements. Some compression
techniques result in the loss of some information while others do not, which may or may not be clinically
important.
Diagnostic Equipment (Scopes, Cameras and Other Peripheral Devices) - Answer A piece of hardware or
device not part of the central computer (e.g., digitizers, stethoscope, or camera) that can provide
medical data input to or accept output from the computer.
Digital - Answer Data technology using discrete values as opposed to continuous or analog signals.
Digital Camera (still images) - Answer A camera that stores images digitally rather than recording them
on film allowing data to be downloaded to a computer system, manipulated with a graphics program and
printed or transmitted electronically. It is typically used to take still images of a patient for dermatology,
ophthalmology, and wound care.
Digital Imaging and Communication in Medicine (DICOM) - Answer The international standard for
medical images and related information (ISO 12052). DICOM consists of a set of protocols describing
how images are identified, formatted, transmitted and displayed that is vendor-independent. It was
developed by the American College of Radiology and the National Electronic Manufacturers Association
(http://medical.nema.org/).
