Patient Care: Critical Role of Case Managers
Case management is the professional and collaborative process that assesses, plans, implements, coordinates, monitors, and evaluates the options and services required to meet an individual’s health needs. It uses communication and available resources to promote health, quality, and cost-effective outcomes. The underlying premise of case management is based on the fact that, when an individual reaches the optimum level of wellness and functional capability, everyone benefits: the individual client being served, the client’s family or family caregiver, the health care delivery system, the reimbursement source or payer, and other involved parties such as the employer and consumer advocates.
Health system environments can be extremely stressful and sometimes they are not really healing environments. Care settings, oftentimes frenetic, include caregivers being easily distracted between the noises made by machines and people, the pieces of information flowing through the nursing station, the fast turnover of patients, and the multiple (at times) computer systems they have to use. People in today’s care environments across the continuum seem to want to be spoon-fed only what they must know to do an immediate task. They are in no mood for inquiry, and the conditions are not ripe for critical thinking.
Case managers have become crucial members of the health care team and the body of knowledge required to practice case management is rapidly growing as the specialty continues to evolve. Modern patient care must be based upon integrated information from a variety of disciplines and high-performing, collaborative teams.
