Lippincott's case management : managing the process of patient care最新文献

Defining the roles and functions of case managers is crucial in today's healthcare environment and necessary for the case management field. One way to address this issue is through the examination of case managers' job descriptions used in various healthcare organizations. The study reported herein used qualitative analysis procedures and the latent class cluster analysis method to examine a national sample of 1028 job descriptions of case managers. The study identified the activities, role relationships, knowledge, skills, and abilities of case managers working in varied settings. It also described the changes that occurred in the practice of case management, based on these job descriptions, over 5 years: from the mid-1990s until the early 2000s. One benefit of this study was a change in one eligibility criterion of the CCM credential. Another was the development of a taxonomy of case managers' roles and functions that can be used as a step toward standardization of case managers' job descriptions.

Case management services are not implemented uniformly or with the same levels of intensity. Case managers serve in diverse settings, have varied training and experiences, and individualize care at the patient level. The flexible characteristics of case management services pose challenges to, and accentuate the need for, successful ongoing evaluation. The purpose of this article is to describe a multimodal evaluation planning strategy that was applied to case management services delivered to pediatric Medicaid recipients within an enhanced primary care case management delivery system. The evaluation planning steps included describing the organization and case management program, identifying barriers to evaluation, outlining evaluation questions, specifying data needs, identifying sources of data, and selecting evaluation methods. The evaluation plan utilized a combination of case studies, monitoring, surveys, and trend analysis. The approaches outlined in this article are likely to be applicable to evaluating diverse case management programs and services.

As more Army National Guard and U.S. Army Reserve soldiers are called to active duty, there has been a rise in injuries sustained or aggravated by deployment. This increase caused an overwhelming explosion in the number of soldiers requiring prolonged medical care. The U.S. Army developed a program to address Army National Guard and U.S. Army Reserve soldiers requiring extended recuperation periods. This article addresses the Army's Community-Based Health Care Initiative. This initiative entails case management through the use of technology involving fax, phone, and e-mail and focuses on reduction in the number of medical holdover soldiers at military treatment facilities. Community-based healthcare organizations allow Army National Guard and Army Reserve soldiers to receive medical care in their hometown while living at home, working for the military, and continuing to receive full benefits as an active duty soldier.

This article presents the author's personal reflections and experiences in providing case management for patients with end-of-life issues. Through case examples and practical guidelines, the reader will gain an insight into dealing with terminal states in the acute care setting. References were drawn from recent literature on the subject, and were the stimulus to this piece.