The Certified Health Data Analyst (CHDA): The Value in Today’s Healthcare Analytics Workforce
The question is no longer simply whether healthcare needs data analysts.
It does.
The question is whether healthcare professionals are prepared
to combine analytical skills with the clinical, financial, operational
and information context.
When I first wrote about the Certified Health Data Analyst (CHDA) credential in 2022 and again in January 2023, healthcare was already experiencing tremendous growth in the volume and complexity of data. At the time, much of my discussion focused on a concerning issue: the historically low first-time pass rate for the CHDA examination and what that might mean for the future of the credential.
My relationship with the CHDA goes back further. I earned the certification in 2015. In the years that followed, I watched the first-time pass rate decline significantly, which contributed to my interest in examining the credential, its challenges, and its value to health information professionals.
More than a decade after earning the CHDA—and several years after writing those earlier articles—I believe the discussion should move beyond the examination itself.
Healthcare data have continued to expand in volume, variety, complexity, and importance. Electronic health records (EHRs), claims, clinical documentation, medical coding, laboratory and imaging systems, registries, patient-generated information, wearable devices, public health systems, and other digital technologies contribute to an increasingly interconnected healthcare data environment.
At the same time, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, natural language processing, predictive analytics, and advanced visualization are changing how healthcare information is analyzed and used.
The question today is therefore broader than whether the CHDA examination is difficult to pass:
What value does the Certified Health Data Analyst credential bring to today's healthcare analytics workforce?
This is the first of three articles that will provide current information for the CHDA; this first article will address these questions:
1. Healthcare Data Analytics -- From Big Data to Actionable Intelligence
2. What Is the Certified Health Data Analyst ((CHDA) Certification?
3. CHDA Pass Rates: What Has Changed?
1) Healthcare Data Analytics -- From Big Data to Actionable Intelligence
The healthcare industry has moved beyond simply recognizing that it generates enormous amounts of data. The challenge today is determining how to transform those data into meaningful information that supports clinical care, operations, reimbursement, quality improvement, population health, research, public health, and organizational decision-making.
Data alone do not create value.
Healthcare data must be acquired, standardized, validated, analyzed, interpreted, communicated, and ultimately used to support decisions.
That progression—from data → information → insight → action → value—requires both analytical capability and an understanding of the healthcare environment in which the data originated.
This is where the healthcare data analyst occupies an important position.
2) What Is the Certified Health Data Analyst (CHDA) Certification?
The Certified Health Data Analyst (CHDA) is a healthcare analytics certification offered by the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA). The credential is designed for professionals who work with healthcare data and demonstrates knowledge of how data are acquired, managed, analyzed, interpreted, and transformed into meaningful information.
The CHDA is particularly relevant because healthcare data analysis requires more than technical proficiency. Healthcare analysts work within a complex information environment that includes clinical documentation, electronic health records (EHRs), medical coding and classification, claims and reimbursement, quality measures, population health, regulatory requirements, data governance, and increasingly, artificial intelligence.
AHIMA describes CHDA professionals as having expertise in health data analysis, reporting, and business needs assessment, including the knowledge to acquire, manage, analyze, interpret, and transform data into accurate, consistent, and timely information.
The certification has also evolved as healthcare analytics has changed.
Following a 2023 job task analysis, AHIMA implemented an updated CHDA examination content outline effective February 1, 2024. The revised examination added Foundational Knowledge of Analytics in Healthcare as a domain while retaining the core areas of Business Needs Assessment, Data Acquisition, Data Analysis, Data Interpretation and Reporting, and Data Governance.
The addition of foundational healthcare analytics knowledge is particularly significant. The current framework incorporates healthcare datasets and quality measures; classification systems, terminologies, and ontologies such as ICD, CPT, SNOMED CT, LOINC, and RxNorm; revenue cycle management; electronic health records and informatics; epidemiology and health equity; different levels and types of analysis; and applications of artificial intelligence in healthcare.
This evolution reflects an important reality about the work of the healthcare data analyst: healthcare analytics does not occur independently of the healthcare environment.
A technically sound analysis still requires an understanding of what the data represent, where they originated, how they were captured and standardized, and how the resulting information will be used.
The CHDA therefore represents more than the ability to work with numbers or produce reports and dashboards. It brings together healthcare knowledge, analytical methods, data management, interpretation, governance, and communication.
AHIMA currently requires CHDA candidates to hold an RHIT or RHIA credential or a bachelor's degree or higher from an accredited institution. Although professional experience is not required, AHIMA recommends at least three years of healthcare data experience and experience with data acquisition, analysis, management, interpretation, reporting, and governance.
This combination helps position the CHDA as a healthcare-specific analytics credential rather than a general data analytics certification. Its focus is not simply on analyzing data, but on understanding and applying analytics within the healthcare information environment.
(CHDA) Value in Today's Healthcare Analytics Workforce
3) CHDA Pass Rates: What Has Changed?
The CHDA pass rate was one of the primary reasons I began writing about the certification several years ago.
I earned the CHDA in 2015. That year, 98 first-time candidates took the examination and 49 percent passed. In the years that followed, however, the first-time pass rate began to decline. By 2018, 135 first-time candidates took the examination and only 26 percent passed.
The continued decline raised important questions. Was the examination appropriately aligned with the knowledge and experience of candidates? Were professionals adequately prepared for an advanced healthcare analytics examination? Did educational background, work experience, other credentials, or age influence success? And what could be done to better prepare healthcare professionals interested in pursuing the CHDA?
These concerns were central to the AHIMA study I discussed in my earlier article. The study examined multiple years of CHDA examination data to better understand factors associated with examination performance.
Among the findings I found particularly interesting at the time were differences associated with educational level and age, while employment status and possession of other AHIMA credentials did not necessarily predict examination success. The findings reinforced my view that the CHDA should be approached as an advanced healthcare analytics credential requiring preparation across a broad range of competencies.
By the time I updated my article in January 2023, the numbers had become even more concerning. The first-time pass rate reported for 2021 was 14 percent, following exceptionally low results during the preceding period. The 2022 rate, however, increased sharply to 50 percent.
At the time, I was cautious about interpreting that improvement because only 38 first-time candidates took the examination in 2022. One year of improved results with a relatively small number of candidates was not enough to establish a trend.
We now have additional data—and the picture has changed.
AHIMA currently reports the following first-time CHDA examination results:
Year | First-Time Testers | First-Time Pass Rate |
2023 | 54 | 48% |
2024 | 71 | 49% |
2025 | 114 | 54% |
As of December 31, 2025, AHIMA reported 356 certified CHDA professionals.
These newer results are significant for two reasons.
First, the improvement seen in 2022 no longer appears to be a single-year occurrence. First-time pass rates have remained near or above 50 percent for several consecutive years, reaching 54 percent in 2025.
Second, the number of first-time candidates is increasing. From 54 first-time testers in 2023 to 114 in 2025, participation more than doubled in two years.
The CHDA examination itself has also evolved. AHIMA conducted a job task analysis in 2023 to validate the knowledge, skills, and tasks required of practicing CHDA professionals. The resulting examination content outline became effective in February 2024 and added Foundational Knowledge of Analytics in Healthcare as a new domain while retaining the five major domains from the previous framework.
It is important, however, not to assume that the revised examination explains the improved pass rates. The improvement began before the new content outline became effective, and pass-rate data alone cannot tell us whether changes resulted from candidate preparation, examination design, educational resources, changes in the candidate population, professional experience, or other factors.
What the data do tell us is that the CHDA story today is different from the one I wrote about in 2023.
The question is no longer simply, “Why is the CHDA pass rate so low?”
A more relevant question may now be:
As pass rates improve and more professionals pursue the certification, how do we ensure that the CHDA continues to represent the knowledge and competencies needed in a rapidly changing healthcare analytics environment?
Continue in Part 2 for CHDA:
Improved pass rates and increasing participation tell us something about the certification—but they do not answer another important question: What does the CHDA mean in the healthcare workplace? In Part 2, I will look beyond the examination to examine employer recognition of the CHDA, the skills healthcare data analysts need today, and why certification alone is only one component of professional development.
The Certified Health Data Analyst (CHDA):
The Value in Today’s Healthcare Analytics Workforce
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