Registered Health Information Administrator (RHIA) Practice Exam 2025 – Comprehensive All-in-One Guide for Exam Success

The network database model is designed to handle complex relationships between data sets, specifically catering to many-to-many relationships. In this model, records can be connected in multiple ways, allowing for more interconnections than one-to-one or one-to-many relationships. This flexibility enables an efficient organization of data where one record can link to several other records and vice versa, forming a web of relationships that reflects real-world scenarios more accurately.

In a network structure, records are represented as nodes, and the relationships between them are represented as links, making it possible for a single record (or node) to act as a 'parent' to multiple child records while also serving as a 'child' to multiple parent records. This contrasts with other data models, such as the hierarchical model, which only accommodates one-to-many relationships and tends to impose a single path or hierarchy for accessing data. As a result, the network database model is particularly effective for applications where complex interrelationships between data must be represented and navigated.