The Certified Professional in Healthcare Risk Management credential is conducted by the American Hospital Association Certification Center (AHA-CC), the certification division of the American Hospital Association, with the American Society for Health Care Risk Management (ASHRM) as the discipline’s professional community. The PassProfessor Certified Professional in Healthcare Risk Management program prepares candidates for the current examination across clinical and patient safety, risk financing, legal and regulatory duties, health care operations, and claims and litigation.
This program is part of the expanding PassProfessor catalog — join the notify list and we’ll email you when enrollment opens.
What this credential certifies
The credential certifies a health care risk management professional: a practitioner whose primary duties, in the AHA Certification Center’s published definition, include the prevention, reduction and control of loss to the health care organisation and to its patients, visitors, volunteers, physicians, other health care professionals and employees. The work sits at the junction of clinical safety, law, insurance and operations — incident investigation and analysis, tracking, trending and evaluation, risk financing and claims management — and the certificant may work in a health care setting or with a provider of services to the industry, such as a consultant, broker or attorney.
Certification is deliberately gated by experience before it is tested by examination. A candidate must pair an education-and-health-care-experience route with a distinct risk management experience requirement: 3,000 hours, or 50 percent of full-time job duties, within the last three years dedicated to health care risk management. The credential therefore certifies something narrower and stronger than examination knowledge alone — a practising risk professional, examined across the whole of the discipline, on a three-year certification cycle maintained by continuing education or by passing the examination again.
One date belongs at the front of any candidate’s planning. The AHA advises that a revised Certified Professional in Health Care Risk Management examination launches on January 11, 2027, and that the current version will be retired on January 10, 2027. Candidates sitting on or before that change should prepare with current materials for the current examination; this program is built to the current published examination and its handbook outline, and the January change is flagged wherever it affects a decision.
The examination at a glance
| Item | Verified position |
|---|---|
| Program | Certified Professional in Healthcare Risk Management (CPHRM) |
| Certifying body | American Hospital Association Certification Center (AHA-CC); examinations administered with PSI; ASHRM is the associated AHA personal membership group |
| Examination | 110 multiple-choice questions in two hours; the score is based on 100 of them, with 10 trial or pretest questions interspersed and not scored; delivered at PSI test centres or by live remote proctoring |
| Passing standard | No numeric passing score is published in the AHA-CC Candidate Handbook or on the AHA’s current CPHRM page, so none is printed here; the handbook states the standard is set by the Angoff method and applied consistently to each form |
| Eligibility | One of: baccalaureate degree or higher plus five years in a health care setting or with a provider of services to the industry; associate degree plus seven years; high school diploma or equivalent plus nine years — AND 3,000 hours or 50% of full-time duties within the last three years in health care risk management |
| AHA-CC exam fee | $275 for ASHRM members; $425 for non-members, as published by the AHA |
| Credential term | Three years |
| Administrator note | PassProfessor is independent and is not affiliated with the AHA, the AHA Certification Center, or ASHRM |
What the examination covers
The examination is based on five major content areas. The Candidate Handbook’s content outline assigns the 100 scored questions by area and by cognitive level — recall, application and analysis — and the distribution itself is a study instruction: analysis carries the heaviest load in the largest area, so this is an examination of judgement more than of recall.
Clinical/Patient Safety — 35 scored questions. Assessing the organisation’s patient safety state and staff awareness; collaborating on proactive safety work such as failure mode analysis, root cause analysis and safety culture; designing education on risk management and patient safety; coaching disclosure; debriefing critical incidents; building corrective action plans and following them up; and designing the data systems — incident reports, complaints, clinical indicators — that let an organisation learn from events before they become claims.
Risk Financing — 10 scored questions. Self-insured retention administration alongside counsel; contractual risk control; investigating accidents and circumstances that could lead to financial loss across professional, institutional, general and product liability; due diligence on new services, acquisitions and construction; assessing liability exposure from adverse events and complaints; analysing loss history; and developing risk financing strategies across the organisation’s exposures.
Legal and Regulatory — 24 scored questions. Promoting compliance, through policy, guidance and education, with state and federal law: confidentiality and protected health information, reporting duties, workplace violence, complaints and grievances, involuntary detention, and the named federal frame — among others the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Anti-Kickback Statute, CMS requirements, EMTALA, FDA duties, the Health Care Quality Improvement Act, HIPAA, the National Practitioner Data Bank, OSHA, the Patient Self-Determination Act, the Safe Medical Devices Act and the Stark Law — together with consent, accreditation readiness, sentinel event requirements, disclosure of unanticipated outcomes, advance directives and patient’s rights.
Health Care Operations — 26 scored questions. Emergency preparedness and business continuity; risk assessments of new and existing services and of enterprise-wide exposures; enterprise risk management itself — philosophy, plan, goals, annual evaluation and reporting; records retention, access and destruction; communication with the governing body and across the continuum of care; media response collaboration; legal document acceptance; department leadership, budgets and staff supervision and training; and information technology liability exposure.
Claims and Litigation — 5 scored questions. Potentially compensable event reporting; open and closed claims and loss runs; notifying carriers and claims departments; participating in claims management from reserves and discovery to trial preparation and evidence preservation; keeping administration informed of high-exposure cases; securing records; maintaining chain of custody; protecting the discoverability position of case files; and managing service of process.
What makes this examination distinct and demanding
The discipline itself is the difficulty: no candidate’s day job covers all five areas evenly. A clinically rooted risk manager meets financing and claims cold; an insurance-rooted candidate meets clinical safety systems and disclosure coaching cold; a legally rooted candidate meets enterprise operations cold. The weighting punishes narrowness asymmetrically — clinical and patient safety alone is more than a third of the scored paper, and operations and legal duties together are half of it — so a preparation plan built only on the candidate’s home ground leaves the majority of the examination to improvisation. The cognitive mix adds the second demand: in the largest area, analysis questions outnumber recall questions by more than two to one, which means the credited answer is usually the best-judged action inside a messy scenario — an event, a disclosure, a regulator’s letter — not the definition of a term. The third demand is temporal: with a revised examination launching in January 2027, candidates must also prepare against the right version of the test for their sitting date.
The route, in order
The route runs: audit eligibility on both limbs — the education and health care experience route, and separately the risk management experience requirement of 3,000 hours or half of full-time duties inside the last three years — because meeting one limb does not cure the other. Apply to the American Hospital Association Certification Center for the examination and pay the published fee for your membership position. Schedule with PSI once the examination is purchased, at an approved testing centre or by live remote proctoring, inside the window the AHA’s process sets. Sit the two-hour, 110-question examination, answering all of it, since the 10 pretest questions cannot be identified and there is no penalty for guessing. Pass, and expect the official certification from the AHA Certification Center about two to four weeks after the testing date. Candidates planning around the January 11, 2027 revision should fix their sitting date first and let it dictate which version of the examination they prepare for.
Staying certified
Certification runs on a three-year period and can be renewed in two ways. The continuing-education route documents 45 qualifying contact hours inside the three-year certification dates, tracked through the AHA’s certification portal. The examination route is simpler to state: pass the examination again. Renewal may be submitted up to a year before expiry without moving the expiry date or extending the next cycle, and a renewal submitted in the 30 days after expiry carries an additional $50 fee — with the conditions that no continuing education earned inside that grace month counts, and that missing the 30-day deadline means reinstating by examination. The AHA publishes renewal fees of $135 for ASHRM members and $225 for non-members. The disciplined holder keeps the contact hours logged inside the cycle rather than reconstructed at its end, because hours outside the certification dates do not qualify however relevant they are.
What the PassProfessor program will cover
The PassProfessor catalog includes a program built to the current published examination: clinical and patient safety, risk financing, legal and regulatory, health care operations, and claims and litigation, weighted as the handbook outline weights them and pitched at the application and analysis levels where the examination concentrates. Material is written from scratch against the AHA Certification Center’s published handbook and content outline; nothing is drawn from another provider’s course, guide or question material. Our companion guide, the Certified Professional in Healthcare Risk Management Exam Guide (/cphrm-exam-guide/), works through the outline, the sitting, the Angoff standard and the January 2027 revision in full.
Independence, stated plainly. PassProfessor is an independent preparation provider, not affiliated with the American Hospital Association, the AHA Certification Center, or ASHRM. Completing this program confers no credential and no eligibility; the AHA Certification Center alone certifies, and candidates apply and test through the AHA-CC and PSI.
Tell me when enrollment opens. This program is in the works and enrollment is not yet open. Leave an email address and PassProfessor will write to you when the program is ready — and only about this program. No date is promised, because the program will open when it meets the standard described above, not before.
Frequently asked questions
Who conducts this certification?
The American Hospital Association Certification Center (AHA-CC), a division of the American Hospital Association, conducts the program; PSI administers the examination. ASHRM — the American Society for Health Care Risk Management — is the AHA personal membership group for the discipline, and its members take the examination at the member fee.
Am I eligible with a bachelor’s degree?
A baccalaureate degree or higher from an accredited institution plus five years of experience in a health care setting or with a provider of services to the industry meets the first limb — and every candidate must also meet the risk management limb: 3,000 hours, or 50 percent of full-time duties, within the last three years in health care risk management.
What if I do not hold a degree?
The routes are seven years of health care experience with an associate degree, or nine years with a high school diploma or equivalent — in each case plus the same risk management experience requirement.
How many questions are on the examination, and how long does it take?
110 multiple-choice questions in two hours. The score is based on 100 of them; 10 are trial or pretest questions interspersed through the examination and not scored.
What is the passing score?
The AHA Certification Center does not publish a numeric passing score in its Candidate Handbook or on its current certification page, so this page prints none. The handbook explains that the minimum passing score is set by the Angoff method — expert judges estimating the passing probability of each question — validated against candidate performance and applied consistently across candidates taking the same form, with equating used between forms.
What does the examination cost?
The AHA publishes $275 for ASHRM members and $425 for non-members. That is the AHA Certification Center’s exam fee, not a PassProfessor price.
What is changing in January 2027?
The AHA advises that a revised examination launches on January 11, 2027, and the current version is retired on January 10, 2027. Candidates should prepare with materials matched to the version they will sit, and confirm the current position with the AHA before booking.
How long is certification valid, and how is it renewed?
Three years. Renewal is by documenting 45 qualifying contact hours earned inside the certification period, or by passing the examination again. Renewal fees are published at $135 for ASHRM members and $225 for non-members, with a $50 addition inside the 30-day post-expiry grace window.
Must my risk management experience be inside a hospital?
No. The requirement can be met in a health care setting or with a provider of services to the health care industry — the handbook gives consultant, broker and attorney as examples.
Is PassProfessor affiliated with the AHA or ASHRM?
No. PassProfessor is an independent preparation provider. The AHA Certification Center alone administers this credential.
When does enrollment open?
The program is in the works and enrollment is not yet open. Leave an email address on this page and PassProfessor will write to you when the program is ready — and only about this program.