NHA Exam Results: When They Post, Where to Find Them, and What Your Score Means

By Castleport Test Prep Editorial Team · Last verified: August 11, 2026

Verified against the NHA Candidate Handbook updated June 1, 2026, NHA's current result and pilot-scoring pages, NHA's paper-proctor guide, NHA's official 2025 pass-rate report, and all nine currently published NHA test plans. Every source was read directly on the date above.

NHA exam results post inside your NHA account. For online exams at an institution or at PSI, NHA's published window is within 48 hours. For a paper-booklet exam, NHA's proctor guide says results post three business days after NHA receives the booklets, plus the time it takes your institution to ship them. A scaled score of 390 or higher on a 200–500 scale passes every exam in the current Candidate Handbook. Open Applications → Exam Results, then Download Individual Result Report.

That's the answer. Now the part almost nobody tells you: a paper booklet changes the clock, a pilot-scored form can legitimately hold your result for up to eight weeks, and two eligibility routes can hand you a pass with no certification number and a deadline that voids your score if the required completion or reporting step is missed. All of it is below, with the official rule and the date that matters.

Quick disambiguation: this page covers National Healthcareer Association certification exams — CCMA, CPT, CET, CMAA, CBCS, CEHRS, CPCT/A, and ExCPT. If you took the Nursing Home Administration (NHA) Line of Service exam through NAB, you're on the wrong page: NAB publishes a passing scaled score of 113, not 390. → NAB's exam score interpretation

Decode your NHA exam results and deadlines

The decoder component does not submit your entries, write them to browser storage, or put them in a URL. We never ask for your NHA login, candidate ID, or certification number, and you should never give those to any prep company.

How long do NHA exam results take?

For online NHA exams at an institution or at PSI, results are available within 48 hours. A computer-based institutional exam may show a preliminary report immediately, but preliminary is not final. Paper-booklet results follow a different rule: three business days after NHA receives the booklets, plus shipping time. A pilot-scored form can take up to eight weeks.

Several official NHA documents cover different routes. Here's how they fit together.

Sources: NHA Help Center — When do I get my exam results? · NHA Candidate Handbook, updated June 1, 2026, Score Reports section · NHA Proctor Process Guide — Paper Version, Submit for Scoring section · NHA Help Center — What is pilot scoring? · All read August 11, 2026.

Does a slow result mean you failed?

No. Result timing carries no information about your score. Not a hint, not a lean, nothing.

We say that flatly because the internet is full of the opposite. Post-exam threads are full of people counting hours, comparing themselves to classmates who tested the same morning, and reading a delay as bad news. The wait reflects the route and the scoring process. It is not a verdict, and NHA publishes nothing that ties timing to outcome.

If a classmate saw a number first, they may have seen an institution's preliminary report while you are waiting for a final online result, or their materials may have reached NHA on a different schedule. Different timing does not establish a different outcome.

Do weekends count in the 48 hours?

For online exams, NHA's Help Center says "within 48 hours." It does not publish a business-day carve-out on that page, and we're not going to invent one for you — some sites quietly translate this into "two business days," which changes the math on a Friday exam by two full days.

So: for an online exam, expect 48 hours. If you tested Friday afternoon and nothing has appeared by Sunday afternoon, you're at the edge of the published window, not past it. If Monday comes and it's still empty, that's when you escalate — steps for that are further down.

For a paper-booklet exam, the rule really is business days, and the clock starts after NHA receives the booklets, not when you put down your pencil.

The routes where 48 hours doesn't apply

Paper booklets. NHA tells proctors to ship all exam materials within three business days. Results become available three business days after NHA receives them. Transit time sits between those two clocks, and a shipment with missing booklets is not scored until every booklet is returned.

Pilot scoring. When NHA releases a new form, it sometimes needs live candidate data before the raw passing score can be set. Its Help Center says collecting a statistically appropriate sample can take up to eight weeks, and candidates wait during that period to learn whether they passed. Not every new release requires it, and NHA says candidates are told in advance when it does.

If you got that notice, follow it, and don't read the wait as a bad sign — the passing standard is still being set for that form.

One version change to watch if you took the CPCT/A. As of August 11, 2026, NHA's detailed CPCT/A update says the new preparation materials launch in October 2026 and the updated exam launches in January 2027. Its Certification Prep page labels the two plans "For Exams Before January 2027" and "For Exams after January 2027." An older entry on NHA's Product & Cert Portal Updates page still says Fall 2026. The detailed announcement and current plan index point to the January 2027 transition, so do not use that older Fall 2026 line to choose your plan.

That matters for two reasons: which test plan your score report maps to, and whether a pilot-scoring period applies to your form. If you're a CPCT/A candidate testing around the transition, confirm your assigned version with NHA rather than guessing from a study guide cover.

→ Check your online, paper, or pilot result window — the decoder uses the route-specific clock.

How to check your NHA exam results

NHA emails you when your result is ready, and that email deliberately does not contain your score. Log into your NHA account, open Exam Results under Applications, confirm your Pass/Fail line, then choose Download Individual Result Report for your scaled score and content-area detail.

The exact path, in order:

1. Open the NHA certification portal and log in — certportal.nhanow.com
2. Use the same candidate account you registered with
3. In the left navigation, open Applications
4. Select Exam Results
5. Read your Pass / Fail line
6. Choose Download Individual Result Report for the scaled score and your content-area lines

That report is the document worth saving. It's the only place your score and your performance detail live together.

Why the email has no score in it

Because NHA keeps it out on purpose. Its Help Center says the notification email excludes your score for confidentiality. So "I got the email and there's no number" is not a broken email, a glitch, or a soft way of breaking bad news. It's the design.

NHA will not tell you your score over the phone

The Candidate Handbook is explicit: exam scores are never provided by phone. Calling gets you help with access problems. It will not get you a number read aloud.

The handbook also limits who else sees it. NHA discloses exam scores to you and, where applicable, your institution — and to a regulator when the law requires it. That's the list.

Don't create a second NHA account

If you can't get in, resist the urge to register again. NHA's handbook tells returning candidates and anyone who already has a profile not to create another one. Use the password reset or NHA support instead; creating a second profile does not recover the result tied to the account used for registration.

The right next step isn't the same for every candidate — it depends on which NHA exam you sat, where you tested, whether you passed, and how far from 390 you landed. The Candidate Handbook and your state board set the requirements, not a checklist on a website. Because a general answer can't resolve those for you, run your own numbers through the decoder above — and if you're rebuilding for a CCMA retake, take the free Castleport CCMA diagnostic and see exactly where you stand before you spend anything.

→ Open the official NHA certification portal — that's NHA's site, not ours. Your result only exists there.

Why are my NHA exam results still pending or missing?

For an online exam, under 48 hours is still inside NHA's published window. For a paper exam, the result is due three business days after NHA receives the booklets, not three days after the test. A pilot-scored form can take up to eight weeks. Past the applicable window, confirm the account and contact NHA. A Certification Queue can withhold a certification number after a pass, but it does not explain a missing score.

Work down this list in order. Stop at the first one that fits.

One correction matters here because candidate forums blur two different problems together: NHA's Certification Queue does not explain a missing result. NHA's educator-side result instructions say the exam result populates, while no certification number is listed until the institution approves the release. The separate queue guide shows that entries carry expiration dates. That is a certificate-release problem after the score exists, not a score-posting delay.

What we can't do — and what you should never send us

We can't see your account, retrieve your result, release a certificate, or change a score. No prep company can. NHA controls score access; where applicable, your institution receives results, and NHA may provide them to a regulating agency when law requires it.

Never send your NHA username, password, candidate ID, or certification number to a prep company, including us. Any site asking for those to "check your result for you" is doing something else. Our decoder calculates from the score, date, and route you enter; it never accesses an NHA account.

→ Read NHA's official instructions for getting exam results — use it as your escalation reference once the window for your route has passed.

What score do you need to pass an NHA exam?

A scaled score of 390 or higher passes every certification exam covered by NHA's current Candidate Handbook. Scores are reported on a 200 to 500 scale, and NHA says scaling keeps the 390 passing standard consistent across exam forms with different difficulty. A scaled score is not a percentage and not a count of correct answers.

That last sentence is where most pages go wrong, and it costs readers real money in wasted study time. Four claims circulate constantly. Here's what the handbook actually supports.

Where the 390 comes from

For the CCMA, NHA publishes a standard-setting executive summary documenting a modified Angoff process: subject-matter experts judged, question by question, what a minimally qualified candidate should answer correctly, and NHA transformed the resulting raw cut score to 390 on the 500-point scale. The Candidate Handbook applies the reported 390 standard to every exam it covers, but NHA does not publish one candidate-facing raw-to-scaled conversion for every form.

Two things follow, and they're both useful.

You aren't competing with the room. This is a competence standard, not a curve. Everyone in your cohort can pass. Nobody's pass costs you anything.

Different forms of your exam vary in difficulty, and scaling is the correction. That's the entire reason the scale exists — so the reported 390 standard stays consistent whether you got a brutal form or a friendly one.

So what does a 389 actually mean?

It means your reported scaled score came in below the passing standard. That's it. It does not mean one question, two questions, or any specific number of questions.

We know that's an unsatisfying answer when you're staring at a 389. It's also the only honest one, and any page that converts your scaled gap into "you missed three questions" is guessing with your study time. Skip to the retake clock — that's where the useful next step is.

What the labels on your NHA score report mean

Your NHA score report gives you a Pass or Fail result, your scaled score, and a performance category for each content area it reports: Above the passing standard, Near the passing standard, Below the passing standard, or N/A. Each category is a range compared with the exam-level passing standard, not an exact score or a percentage for that area.

Plain-English version:

How much of your exam sits behind one line

We opened all nine NHA test plans currently posted and recorded, by hand, how many scored questions sit in each major content area. That tells you something the report never says out loud: how much of your exam one word is summarizing.

Item counts are official, taken from each exam's published NHA test plan. Percentages are Castleport calculations from those counts. All nine plans read August 11, 2026.

Three things fall out of that table.

Not all reports are equally useful. A CET candidate gets three lines to explain a hundred questions, and one of those lines covers 44 of them. A CMAA candidate gets seven lines where the largest is 21 questions. Same three words, wildly different diagnostic value. If you're on an exam where one area is 43–45% of the test, a "Below" on that line is a direction, not a study plan.

Two exams have subdomains, and six don't. Only the CCMA and the ExCPT define subdomains inside their content areas. NHA's public Candidate Handbook promises diagnostic information for major content areas; it does not promise that every subdomain will appear as a separate row on every report. Check the report in front of you. If subdomain rows are present, use them. On the six exams whose current test plans define no subdomains, your major content areas are the deepest blueprint level available.

An N/A should make you curious. NHA writes the rule specifically for major content areas, and not one major content area on any current plan is at or below five questions — the smallest is 7, on the CCMA. One ExCPT subdomain contains 5 scored items, but NHA does not say whether the major-area N/A rule is applied to subdomain rows, so we do not use that subdomain to predict an N/A. If a major content area on your report comes back N/A, that's unusual on today's blueprints and worth a support ticket.

What your report will not tell you

It won't show you which questions you missed. It won't show a percentage for each area. It won't name the task statements behind your misses. It won't add up.

So a Below on a 12-item area narrows your problem to twelve questions' worth of blueprint territory — and then leaves you to sort out which part of that territory you don't know. That gap is normal for a certification exam, and the fix is the same everywhere: open your exam's official test plan, find the area you were rated Below or Near, and work fresh questions inside it until you can explain why the right answer is right and why each wrong answer is wrong.

Your test plan is free. Every one of them. → NHA's test plans by profession

You passed. What happens next?

When your passing result and eligibility are finalized, NHA emails you and your certificate becomes available to print from your NHA account under My Achievements. Your certification is valid for two years, and NHA's public verification tool will show your credential and certification number — but never your score and never a failed attempt.

The short checklist for the next twenty minutes:

• Download the Individual Result Report. It's the only place your score lives.
• Print or save the certificate from My Achievements once it appears.
• Record your certification number and expiration date. Employers ask for both.
• Claim your digital badge or transcript if your credential is ACE-approved. NHA moved digital badging and transcripts to Accredible on November 4, 2025.
• Diary your renewal. Two years, and most NHA credentials need 10 continuing education credits in that window. The ExCPT is different: 20 CE hours, including at least one hour of pharmacy law and one hour of patient safety. NHA allows a one-month grace period.

What an employer can see

Anyone — an employer, a school, a state agency — can use NHA's public verification tool. The Candidate Handbook says NHA provides certification-verification information to the public.

What they see: that you're certified, your credential, your certification number, your current status. What they don't see: your scaled score, and any attempt you didn't pass. That's worth knowing if you're carrying a failed attempt around in your head. It isn't on your public record.

→ NHA's certification verification tool

One thing certification is not

It isn't a state license. NHA's own handbook says its eligibility rules are separate from any state requirement to practice, and that you're responsible for knowing your state's rules. If your role is regulated where you work, confirm that separately with your state board. This page is exam-result guidance, not legal or licensing advice.

You passed but there's no certification number. What now?

A pass and a certification number are two separate events on the pre-externship, employer-training, and Certification Queue routes. NHA can show your passing result while holding the certification number until a school or employer acts. On the first two routes, a missed deadline voids the score. A provisional certification is different: it is an issued credential, not a missing certificate number.

This is the most stressful page in the handbook and the least covered on the internet. Read it carefully if it's you.

Sources: NHA Candidate Handbook, eligibility pathways, updated June 1, 2026 · How to View Certification Exam Results · Managing the Externship Certification Queue · Read August 11, 2026.

Notice what the first two rows have in common. You did your part on the exam. You still have completion and reporting steps, and if the final notice does not reach NHA by the deadline, you lose the score you already earned. That is not a reason to panic, but it is a reason to stop waiting politely.

For an externship or employer-training hold, ask one specific question today: "What date did you submit my completion to NHA?" Not "did you send it." A date. Then put the deadline in your phone.

For a Certification Queue hold, ask: "Has my certification been approved, and what is the queue expiration date?"

If you have a provisional NHA certification

A provisional certification is already a credential. NHA makes it available to eligible candidates who test before high school graduation, and it is not available for the ExCPT. It expires 12 months after the exam date, cannot be renewed or reinstated, and must be converted to a full certification after graduation while it is still active. If it lapses first, NHA requires a retake.

→ Find the certificate route that matches you — the decoder puts the 90-day, 180-day, queue question, or 12-month provisional date on screen.

You didn't pass. Here's your retake clock.

After a first or second unsuccessful attempt, NHA requires a minimum 30-day wait before the next one. You're allowed three attempts, and after the third — and after each attempt that follows — the wait is one year. Every retake means re-registering and paying the full exam price.

There's no reduced retake price in the handbook: every retake requires the full current examination price. Your NHA account is the final amount for your registration route, especially if a school, employer, voucher, or sponsor is involved. → NHA's official shop

How to spend the 30 days

Not on re-reading the practice set you already remember the answers to. Do this instead:

1. Start with every area rated Below, biggest area first. Use the table above — if you're on the CET and EKG Acquisition came back Below, that's 44 of your 100 questions. It goes first.
2. Then every Near. The handbook says Near isn't satisfactory. Believe it.
3. Don't skip the Above areas. Above is a range. You could be sitting at the bottom of it.
4. Open your test plan and work inside the weak area, not around it. Fresh questions, with a reason attached to every answer.
5. Expect a different form. Your bands from this attempt are not a forecast. NHA says a category you earned once doesn't guarantee the same category on a retake, because the difficulty mix moves between forms.

Thirty days is a real study window. A failed attempt does not mean you're incapable. The useful move now is to stop spreading thin study across everything and put thick study into the areas that carry the most questions. You have a report that tells you where to aim, which is more than most exams give you.

If you're retaking the CCMA

Ownership disclosure: the tool below is ours. Castleport Test Prep publishes it. It's the free Castleport CCMA diagnostic — 25 original questions written to the current NHA CCMA test plan, instant scoring by top-level domain, a written rationale on every item, and no sign-up or email required to see your result.

And here's its honest limit, since you're about to spend study time on it: 25 mixed questions can point to Clinical Patient Care as the first problem to investigate. It cannot tell you which sixth of Clinical is your problem, because 84 of the CCMA's 150 scored questions live there and a short mixed test doesn't sample any subdomain deeply enough to call it. If your score report already broke Clinical into subdomain rows, that report is more precise than our diagnostic and you should start there.

We'd rather tell you that up front than sell you a false readiness score. What it's genuinely good for: finding the first domain to open tonight, in about fifteen minutes, without handing over an email address.

→ Take the free Castleport CCMA diagnostic — 25 original questions, instant domain breakdown, full rationales, no email → See the CCMA Exam System in development — the launch-list page is live; the paid system is not for sale yet

If you're retaking one of the other seven

We don't have a diagnostic for your exam yet, and we're not going to point you at a CCMA tool that doesn't fit your blueprint. Use your exam's official NHA test plan — it's free, and it's the document your questions were written from. Every area rated Below or Near on your report maps to a numbered section in it.

→ NHA's test plans by profession

We don't offer a pass guarantee, and we won't imply one. The free diagnostic is a directional study tool, not a prediction of what will happen on your retake.

Can you get an NHA exam rescored or appeal the result?

Yes, and both windows are short. A hand rescore must be requested in writing within 60 days of your exam date, NHA may charge a fee for it, and the determination is final. A score appeal is a separate process on NHA's official Appeals form, must be received within 30 days of your exam date, and that decision is also final and communicated in writing only.

One detail that costs people their window: both clocks run from your exam date, not from the day you read your report. If your result took 48 hours and you spent a week deciding, you've already used eight days of a thirty-day appeal window.

Set your expectations honestly, too. A hand rescore is a hand rescoring of the exam, not a new attempt. An appeal is a formal review of your final score. NHA publishes no success rate for either process. Separately, NHA reviews exam-result data for scoring anomalies or errors and, if one affects scoring, rescores the exam and tells you whether your pass/fail changed.

→ Get both deadline dates from your exam date — the decoder prints them with the days remaining.

Which NHA exams do these rules cover?

All eight. The 200–500 scale, 390 passing standard, Above/Near/Below reporting, retake rules, and challenge windows apply to every certification exam covered by NHA's current Candidate Handbook. Online results use the 48-hour rule; paper booklets and pilot-scored forms use the exceptions above. What differs by exam is the number of questions, time limit, and content areas on your report.

Every figure from the exam's official NHA test plan, read August 11, 2026. All eight programs are accredited by the National Commission for Certifying Agencies (NCCA).

What are the official NHA exam pass rates?

NHA's official 2025 report publishes the percentage passing for all eight exams. The rates range from 62.75% for the ExCPT to 81.73% for the CCMA. These are percentages of exam administrations in calendar year 2025 — not first-attempt rates, not unique-candidate rates, and not a prediction of your result.

Across the report, NHA counted 254,225 exam administrations. The highest and lowest published percentages are 18.98 percentage points apart. Those two calculations are ours from NHA's table; the administration counts and pass percentages are NHA's.

A pass-rate table can tell you what happened across a full calendar year. It cannot tell you whether a particular form was easier, how many administrations were retakes, or your personal chance of passing. Use your score report and current test plan for the decision in front of you.

Source: NHA — 2025 Pass Rates for NHA Examinations, revised January 9, 2026; read August 11, 2026.

What we actually verified for this page

Read directly on August 11, 2026:

Official NHA sources

• NHA Candidate Handbook, updated June 1, 2026 — scaled scoring and the 390 standard, score-report contents, the Above/Near/Below definitions and the major-area five-or-fewer N/A rule, preliminary versus final results, retake waits and the full-price rule, the 60-day rescore and 30-day appeal windows, the pre-externship 90-day and employer-training 180-day certificate holds, provisional certification, credential validity, and confidentiality rules
• NHA Help Center — When do I get my exam results? — the 48-hour window for institution and PSI online exams
• NHA Proctor Process Guide — Paper Version — shipment within three business days, no scoring while booklets are missing, and results three business days after NHA receives the booklets
• NHA Help Center — How do I get my exam results? — the portal path, Download Individual Result Report step, no-score notification email, 500 maximum, and 390 minimum passing score
• NHA Help Center — What is pilot scoring and when does it apply? — the up-to-eight-weeks data-collection period and advance-notice rule
• NHA educator result instructions and Certification Queue guide — a queue withholds the certification number, not the score result, and entries have expiration dates
• NHA detailed CPCT/A update, NHA Product & Cert Portal Updates, and NHA Certification Prep — the January 2027 exam launch, October 2026 prep release, exact before/after-January plan labels, and the older Fall 2026 line that remains on the updates page
• NHA 2025 annual pass-rate report, revised January 9, 2026 — administrations and percentage passing for all eight exams
• All nine currently published NHA test plans — CCMA, CPT, CET, CMAA, CBCS, CEHRS, ExCPT, and both CPCT/A plans. We recorded the scored-item count, pretest count, time limit, and every major content-area item count ourselves and built the tables on this page from those numbers
• NHA CCMA standard-setting executive summary — the CCMA modified Angoff process and transformation of its raw cut score to 390

Our own calculations, labeled as ours

• Each major content area's share of its exam's scored items
• The smallest major content area across all nine plans and why no current major area falls under NHA's five-or-fewer N/A rule
• The total 2025 exam administrations and the 18.98-point spread between NHA's highest and lowest published pass percentages

What we could not verify uniformly, so we did not turn it into a universal claim

• One exact out-of-pocket exam or retake fee for every candidate and every route. The handbook verifies that each retake requires the full examination price, but school, employer, voucher, and sponsor arrangements can change what a candidate pays. Your account is the final amount for your registration route
• Any raw-to-scaled conversion. NHA does not publish one universal conversion, and form difficulty varies, so no page can tell you how many questions 390 equals
• The authenticated candidate portal UI from inside a private account. NHA's public Help Center currently verifies the labels Applications, Exam Results, and Download Individual Result Report; those labels should be rechecked if NHA changes the portal

Review status: this page carries no "Reviewed by" name because no named credentialed reviewer has completed a review of it. We won't put a stock name on a page to make it look finished. → Our reviewer status · How we verify · Report an error

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NHA exam results: frequently asked questions

How long does it take to get NHA exam results?

For online exams at an institution or at PSI, NHA says results are available within 48 hours. A computer-based institutional exam may show a preliminary report immediately. Paper-booklet results post three business days after NHA receives the booklets, and pilot scoring can take up to eight weeks.

How long do paper NHA exam results take?

NHA's paper-proctor guide says the institution must ship the materials within three business days of the exam, and results become available three business days after NHA receives the booklets. Shipping time sits between those clocks. Missing booklets stop scoring until all materials are returned.

Are NHA exam results instant?

Sometimes, and only as a preliminary report. If you tested on a computer at your school or employer's test site, the handbook says a preliminary score report may be available immediately. Preliminary is not final. PSI and live-remote online results use the 48-hour window; paper and pilot routes use their own timelines.

Does a slow result mean I failed?

No. NHA publishes nothing that connects result timing to your outcome. The timing follows the testing and scoring route, not performance.

Where do NHA exam results get posted?

In your NHA account. Log in, open Exam Results under Applications, read your Pass/Fail line, then choose Download Individual Result Report for your scaled score and content-area detail.

Why is there no score in the email NHA sent me?

Because NHA leaves it out on purpose. Its Help Center says the notification email excludes your score for confidentiality. The number is in the portal.

Can NHA tell me my score over the phone?

No. The Candidate Handbook states that exam scores are never provided over the phone.

What is a passing score on an NHA exam?

A scaled score of 390 or higher on a 200–500 scale passes every exam covered by NHA's current Candidate Handbook, including the CCMA, CPT, CET, CMAA, CBCS, CEHRS, CPCT/A, and ExCPT.

Is 390 out of 500 the same as 78% correct?

No. 500 is the top of the reporting scale, not the number of questions. NHA does not publish a universal raw-to-scaled conversion, so no percentage of correct answers can be worked out from a scaled score.

I got a 389. Did I miss it by one question?

No — that cannot be determined from the report. A scaled point is not a question. A 389 means your reported score came in one scaled point below the 390 standard.

What does "Near the passing standard" mean on an NHA score report?

It means your performance in that major content area was close to the exam-level standard. NHA states explicitly that Near does not indicate satisfactory performance in that area, so for study purposes it belongs with the weak areas.

Why does one area on my report say N/A?

NHA reports N/A when a major content area had five or fewer questions on your form, because the small item count creates statistical-reliability concerns. Across the nine current test plans, the smallest major content area has 7 questions, so an N/A on a current major area is unusual and worth asking NHA about.

Can my employer see my NHA exam score or a failed attempt?

No. NHA's public verification tool shows certification status, credential, and certification number. It does not show scores or failed attempts. NHA releases scores to you and, where applicable, your institution, or to a regulator when law requires it.

What are the official NHA exam pass rates?

For exams administered in 2025, NHA published pass percentages from 62.75% for the ExCPT to 81.73% for the CCMA. Those are exam-administration percentages, not first-attempt rates, unique-candidate rates, or personal odds.

How long do I have to wait to retake an NHA exam?

At least 30 days after a first or second unsuccessful attempt. NHA allows three attempts with at least 30 days between them; after a third unsuccessful attempt, and after each later failure, the wait is one year. Every retake requires re-registering and paying the full examination price.

Is there a discounted NHA retake fee?

No reduced retake price appears in the handbook. It says every retake requires the full examination price. Your NHA account shows the current amount for your registration route.

I passed but there's no certification number. Why?

It may be a pre-externship hold, employer-training hold, or Certification Queue release. The first two carry 90-day and 180-day deadlines from the exam date, and a missed deadline can void the score. A provisional certification is different: NHA issues a provisional credential rather than withholding the certification number.

How long is a provisional NHA certification valid?

Twelve months after the exam date. It cannot be renewed or reinstated, must be converted after graduation while active, and is not available for the ExCPT.

Can I get my NHA exam rescored or appeal my score?

Yes. A hand rescore must be requested in writing within 60 days of your exam date and NHA may charge a fee; determinations are final. A score appeal is separate, goes on NHA's official Appeals form within 30 days of your exam date, and the written decision is final. Both windows run from the exam date.

How long is a passing NHA exam score valid?

Once an ordinary passing result has produced a standard certification, NHA does not publish a separate general expiration period for the score; the certification itself is valid for two years. Before standard certification, the handbook does publish score-void deadlines: 90 days for pre-externship, 180 days for employer training, and 12 months for a provisional credential.

How do I get my NHA certificate after passing?

Once the passing result and eligibility requirements are finalized, NHA emails you and the certificate becomes available in your account under My Achievements. A standard certification is valid for two years. A provisional certification follows the separate 12-month rule above.

Does this page cover the nursing home administrator NHA exam?

No. The Nursing Home Administration Line of Service exam is administered through NAB, a different organization with a different scoring system. NAB publishes a passing scaled score of 113. Use NAB's score information instead.

Still deciding what to do next?

If you're waiting, you're waiting — but the clock depends on your route. The decoder above will tell you whether you're inside the 48-hour online window, the paper-booklet timeline, or a pilot-scoring wait.

If you're holding a report you don't like, the useful move isn't another lap around the internet. It's your lowest-rated content area, your exam's free official test plan, and fresh questions with reasons attached.

→ Run your score through the decoder — pass/fail against 390, a study order weighted by question count, and every deadline that now applies to you → Take the free Castleport CCMA diagnostic — CCMA candidates only. 25 original questions, instant domain breakdown, no email → Open your exam's official NHA test plan — free, official, and the document your questions came from

Castleport Test Prep publishes the free CCMA diagnostic linked above. There is nothing to buy on this page, the diagnostic is not behind an email form, and the paid CCMA Exam System is still in development rather than for sale. → See the CCMA Exam System launch page

Castleport Test Prep is an independent publisher of exam preparation materials. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or approved by NHA, any testing vendor, licensing board, or certifying body. Exam and credential names are used descriptively for identification only. Castleport does not claim ownership of third-party names or marks.

Castleport practice questions are original items written to published test plans. We have no access to live exam content, we do not use recalled or reconstructed questions, and we do not offer or imply a pass guarantee. This page is exam-result and study guidance, not legal, licensing, employment, or scope-of-practice advice. NHA controls exam results, eligibility, and certification decisions; state authorities and employers may impose separate requirements. Confirm anything consequential in NHA's current sources before you act on it.

Last verified: August 11, 2026 · By Castleport Test Prep Editorial Team

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