This CMAA cheat sheet distills the NHA Certified Medical Administrative Assistant exam into a printable rundown of the front-office facts examiners test most. It's a premium cheat sheet built by Capital Prep — the one premium prep we trust — and it's yours free. Reinforce it with the rest of your free CMAA toolkit: the practice test, study guide, and flashcards.
CMAA exam at a glance
- Questions: 130 total — 110 scored plus 20 unscored pretest items
- Time: 2 hours 10 minutes
- Passing score: Scaled score of 390 (scale of 200-500)
- Cost: Approximately $117 exam fee — verify the current price at NHANow.com
- Certifying body: National Healthcareer Association (NHA)
- Renewal: Every 2 years with 10 continuing-education (CE) credits
What’s on the CMAA cheat sheet
- Communication & Professionalism (21 items, ~19%) — telephone and written communication, therapeutic and de-escalation techniques, teamwork, and cultural competence.
- Patient Encounter (21 items, ~19%) — registration and intake, demographics and insurance capture, the medical record and EHR, and the clean-claim basics.
- Medical Law, Ethics & Compliance (17 items, ~15%) — HIPAA and minimum necessary, TPO, consent and release of information, patient rights, and fraud vs abuse.
- Scheduling (16 items, ~15%) — the appointment matrix, stream, wave, modified-wave and double-booking systems, no-shows, reminders, and referrals.
- Administrative Procedures & Logistics (14 items, ~13%) — office operations, inventory, mail and records management, OSHA, and safety.
- Billing & Revenue Cycle (11 items, ~10%) — the encounter form, coding and claims basics, copays and deductibles, and patient collections.
- Foundational Knowledge (10 items, ~9%) — medical terminology and body systems, the healthcare team, care settings, and payer types.
How to use it in your final week
- Do one HIPAA pass a day: minimum necessary, TPO disclosures without separate authorization, and when written authorization is required — this is the domain candidates most often get wrong.
- Front-load Communication and Professionalism plus Patient Encounter (21 items each). If you master two areas from the sheet, make them these.
- Lock the scheduling and revenue-cycle sequences: build the appointment matrix first, then the registration-to-clean-claim chain — accurate demographics and insurance are the top denial preventers.
- Read the sheet the morning of the exam for a final pass on the memory hooks — scaled 390 to pass, 110 scored items in 2 hours 10 minutes, and the payer rules (HMO referral vs PPO out-of-network).
The cheat sheet is your review layer — your CMAA practice test drives the exam-readiness ring at the top of this page. Download it, review, then take a full practice exam (or drill with the study guide and flashcards) to see where you stand.
CMAA cheat sheet FAQ
Yes — download the CMAA cheat sheet as a PDF with no account and no sign-up. It sits alongside Career Employer's free CMAA practice test, study guide, and flashcards, so your entire front-office review lives in one place.
The sheet packs the highest-yield front-office facts into a fast reference: HIPAA and the minimum-necessary rule, TPO disclosures, scheduling systems, the appointment matrix, registration and the clean-claim basics, the revenue cycle, and the payer types — mapped to the seven NHA content domains.
No — treat it as a last-mile cram and memory-jog, not a full course. The CMAA is scored on a 200 to 500 scale and you need a scaled 390 to pass, so use the sheet to lock in facts and the practice test to prove you clear the bar.
Weight your final passes toward Communication and Professionalism and Patient Encounter — 21 scored items each, nearly 40 percent of the exam together. Medical Law, Ethics, and Compliance (17) is the next-heaviest and the one candidates most often misapply, so give HIPAA its own review.
Tap the download button or the preview card at the top of this page to open the PDF instantly. Bookmark the page so it's one click away the morning of your NHA exam.
References
- 1.National Healthcareer Association. “Medical Administrative Assistant Certification (CMAA).” nhanow.com, 2026. ↑
- 2.National Healthcareer Association. “NHA Certified Medical Administrative Assistant (CMAA) Test Plan.” nhanow.com, 2026. ↑
- 3.U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. “HIPAA for Professionals: The Privacy Rule.” hhs.gov, 2026. ↑
- 4.National Healthcareer Association. “NHA Certification Renewal & Reinstatement (Stay Certified).” nhanow.com, 2026. ↑
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