NHA CPT pass rate: historical results explained

NHA's 2022 annual report puts the Certified Phlebotomy Technician pass rate at 77.31% of the 47,313 CPT examinations administered during calendar year 2022. This is a historical result—not a first-attempt rate or a result for the updated exam introduced on January 7, 2026.

Historical NHA CPT result: 2022

The report states a scaled passing score of 390 out of 500. It counts exam administrations. It does not publish a separate first-attempt rate, and the active-certification column is a different measure—the number of valid CPT credentials on the last day of the year, not the number of people who tested.

What that 77.31% actually counts

NHA's 2022 annual report is one page. For each of its certifications it gives three things: how many examinations were administered that calendar year, what percentage of them passed, and how many certifications were active at year end. That's the whole document.

So the figure means: of every 100 CPT exam sessions delivered in 2022, about 77 ended in a passing scaled score. The other 22.69% did not — closer to one in four than one in five.

Here's what it does not mean.

• It isn't a count of people. Someone who failed in March and passed in May shows up as two administrations and one pass. This annual report does not publish how many individual candidates tested.
• It isn't a first-attempt rate. There is no attempt-order column in the report. The report does not establish that 77.31% is a first-time pass rate.
• It isn't a school or state figure. NHA describes separate institutional reporting that includes student results alongside state and national averages.
• It isn't a prediction. It describes exams that have already happened. It does not establish your individual chance of passing.

Same twenty people, three different pass rates

This is where the denominator changes the answer, so it's worth doing the arithmetic once.

A hypothetical example — not NHA data. Twenty candidates each take an exam once. Fifteen pass. All five who failed take exactly one retest, and four of them pass it.

• First-attempt pass rate: 15 ÷ 20 = 75%
• Pass rate across all attempts: 19 passes ÷ 25 attempts = 76%
• Share of the original group who have passed by the end of the follow-up period: 19 ÷ 20 = 95%

Same twenty people. Same results. Three honest percentages, ranging from 75% to 95%, because each one answers a different question.

NHA's annual table uses the middle kind: passes divided by administrations. That is why the first thing to ask about any pass rate — NHA's, a school's, or one in an article — is which denominator it used and over what period. A percentage without its cohort attached can't be compared to anything.

Why you'll see other NHA CPT numbers

Different percentages can answer different questions. The reporting year and the purpose of the source matter.

82.3%. This one comes from NHA's CPT National Standard Setting Study executive summary. When NHA set the CPT cut score in 2017, it checked what share of an initial sample of 767 candidates would have passed at that score. The answer was 82.3%. That is a one-time figure from the 2017 standard-setting exercise involving fewer than 800 people, not a national annual result.

77.31%. Correct for 2022. Check the report year before you use a number, not the article's publication date.

"The first-time pass rate is X." A first-attempt claim needs a source that separates first attempts from retests. The 2022 annual report does not provide that breakdown.

A quick test for any pass rate you run into: does it name a calendar year, say what it counted, and link to the document it came from? Those details let you check what it measures; they do not, by themselves, make two rates comparable.

Do these rates describe the exam you'll actually sit?

No. The 2022 result predates the current exam.

NHA released a new version of the CPT exam on January 7, 2026, built on a job task analysis of working phlebotomy technicians. NHA described the change as having minimal impact on exam topics and content areas — so this is a refresh, not a reinvention.

Every administration counted in the 2022 result happened before that switchover. A 2026 calendar-year reporting period crosses the January 7 changeover, so an annual total alone would not establish a separate pass rate for the updated exam. That would require NHA to identify the exam-version population behind the figure.

NHA also set one rule around the changeover worth knowing if you tested near it: candidates who tested and failed within the 30 days before the launch had to retest on the new version.

None of this makes the historical figures useless. It just means the honest label on this number is "the exam as it was in 2022." The size of a content update alone does not tell you how its pass rate will change.

The number that decides your result is 390 — not 78%

NHA's current result-report instructions give a maximum score of 500 and a minimum passing score of 390. Two things about that standard change how you should read the pass rate.

The standard is set in advance, not by a curve. NHA describes its approach as criterion-referenced standard setting. In the historical CPT study, NHA used a modified version of the Angoff method: a panel of phlebotomy subject-matter experts went through the exam item by item and judged whether a minimally qualified technician would answer each one correctly. Those judgments produced a raw cut score, which was converted to the scaled 390. That happened in 2017, and NHA describes the result as criterion-referenced — meaning it measures you against a fixed description of entry-level competence, not against everyone else who tested that week.

So nobody is competing with you. The pass rate is an outcome, not a quota. If every candidate in your testing window scored above the standard, every one of them would pass. Candidates who do not pass are not making room for anyone.

390 out of 500 is not 78% of the questions. NHA's scoring explanation says scored items receive one point for a correct answer and zero for an incorrect answer. That produces a raw total; it is not the same measure as the scaled passing score. Harder questions are not described as earning extra raw points. The sources linked here do not supply a fixed raw-to-scaled conversion or a universal number of questions you can miss.

The practical version: study to know the material, not to hit a question count. And treat a practice-test percentage as feedback on those specific questions. It doesn't convert into a scaled score and it doesn't predict a pass.

Can pass rates tell you which exam is easier?

Comparing the CPT to a phlebotomy exam from a different certifying body doesn't work well — different exams, different eligibility rules, different candidate pools, and different definitions of what a "pass rate" counts. The same caution applies when comparing NHA's own exams: shared reporting columns and a shared scaled-score label do not make the candidate populations interchangeable.

Each exam has its own content, its own cut-score study, and its own candidate pool, so a higher rate can just as easily mean better-prepared candidates as an easier test. A pass-rate table describes outcomes; it does not isolate exam difficulty.

Before you trust a school's pass rate

Training programs advertise pass rates, and some of them are very high. A 95% or 100% claim isn't automatically false just because it's above the national figure — a small, well-taught cohort really can post numbers like that. But a percentage on a brochure is not comparable to anything until you know five things.

1. Same exam? Is the claim specifically about the NHA CPT, or does it combine several certifications, or cover a different phlebotomy credential entirely?
2. Which period, and which exam version? A rate from before January 7, 2026 predates the updated CPT exam.
3. Who was counted? Everyone who enrolled, everyone who graduated, everyone who sat the exam, unique candidates, or exam attempts — and how many people are behind the percentage? Ten students is a very different claim from two hundred.
4. Which outcome? First attempt, all attempts, or everyone who eventually passed within some follow-up window? As the twenty-candidate example above shows, those can differ by twenty percentage points for the exact same group.
5. What was left out? Students who never sat the exam, withdrawals, incompletes, or people still waiting to retest.

There's also a number that's genuinely about the program rather than the country. NHA provides institutions with reporting summarizing their students' pass rate alongside state and national averages for comparison. Your individual score stays confidential unless you permit disclosure. Ask the program for its NHA CPT results report, and ask which year it covers, what denominator it uses, and how many candidates or administrations it includes. Without those details, its percentage is not a comparable benchmark.

What to do with this number

If your exam is coming up

Stop treating the national rate as a forecast and start working from the test plan, which NHA publishes free. The current CPT test plan, built on the 2024 job analysis, specifies 120 questions in two hours: 100 scored, plus 20 pretest items. Only the 100 scored items contribute to your score.

Those are item counts, not difficulty ratings and not a study-hours formula. What they tell you is where the questions are: Routine Blood Collections and Safety and Compliance together make up more than half your scored exam. The plan itself is more useful than the percentages, because it lists the specific task and knowledge statements behind every domain. Work through those and mark the ones you couldn't explain to someone else.

If you didn't pass

Read your score report before you book anything. NHA's result instructions direct you to Exam Results under Applications, then Download Individual Result Report. The report shows your score and more detail across the exam's test plan.

NHA's retake guidance distinguishes the waiting periods:

1. After a first or second unsuccessful attempt, wait at least 30 days. This is a minimum interval, not a deadline to take the next exam.
2. After a third unsuccessful attempt, wait 12 months before testing again. Do not apply the shorter interval to that situation.
3. Each retake carries an exam fee. Check the amount when registering; the national pass rate does not change the fee.

Then do the actual work. Open the test plan next to your score report. For every area where the report identifies weaker performance, read the task and knowledge statements under that domain and mark the ones you can't explain. That list — not a percentage, and not the national pass rate — is your retake study plan. Use the waiting period to work on those gaps; it is not a promise that a fixed number of study days will be enough.

Sources and verification

Prepare with proof: the official figures on this page link to the NHA documents they came from.

• Historical pass rate and administration count — NHA's 2022 annual report, page 1: calendar-year definition, CPT row and active-certification column. This is a 2022 result, not a claim about the latest reporting year.
• The historical cut score, Angoff method and 82.3% sample figure — CPT National Standard Setting Study executive summary, page 1, describing the 2017 study.
• Scoring principles — NHA's scoring explanation, February 6, 2020, questions 1 and 4; current numerical passing threshold confirmed in the result instructions below.
• Passing threshold and individual results — NHA: How do I get my exam results?, steps 2–4.
• Retake intervals and fees per attempt — NHA: What to do if you didn't pass your exam, opening, score-report section and closing retake instructions.
• Exam format and domain weights — NHA CPT test plan, page 1, based on the job analysis completed in 2024.
• The January 7, 2026 exam version — NHA's CPT exam update announcement, opening and changeover instructions.
• What NHA shares with schools — NHA Help Center: Where are NHA certifications sent?.

Last verified September 14, 2026: the 2022 annual report; CPT standard-setting summary; current CPT test plan and exam-version announcement; and the NHA scoring, result-report, retake and institutional-reporting pages listed above. The three PDF sources were checked directly, including their relevant page images. We did not sit the exam, access a candidate portal, or contact NHA.

The twenty-candidate example is our own illustration, built to show how denominators change a percentage. It is not NHA data and does not describe the mix of attempts behind NHA's annual result. Its three percentages and the 22.69% complement of the published 2022 rate were recalculated from the inputs shown.

Pass rates, fees and exam rules change. Check NHA's own pages before acting on anything time-sensitive.

By the Castleport Test Prep Editorial Team. Researched and written with AI assistance; source checks and calculations are described above.

Castleport Test Prep is an independent exam prep publisher. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or approved by the National Healthcareer Association or Assessment Technologies Institute. Exam and credential names are used to identify their subjects, and trademarks belong to their respective owners. Nothing on this page guarantees a passing score, certification, licensure, employment, or income. This page does not determine eligibility or state authorization to practice.