Care Coordination: An Important Case Management Role for Managing Cost and Length of Stay

Care coordination is one of the four key roles that hospital case managers and social workers perform. The other roles include utilization management, discharge planning, and resource management. Care Coordination is integral to managing cost and length of stay. Nevertheless, it is often overlooked or under-performed. This is sometimes due to workload issues and/or understaffing. Other times it is due to a lack of focus on this area of work. Case management professionals must perform this role in their daily practice. No other department or discipline owns care coordination in the way that we do and so we must understand how best to coordinate care and how to integrate care coordination into our daily practice. We provide leadership in cost and length of stay reduction and care coordination is a fundamental way in which to achieve these outcomes. 

Care coordination is one of the key, fundamental roles of the RN case manager and social worker and yet it is often left to the lowest of priorities in our daily work. As a case management professional, you must think beyond utilization management and discharge planning and incorporate care coordination into your daily practice. Do you know how to affect a positive outcome in caring for your patients by ensuring that their care is coordinated and facilitated?

Webinar Objectives

• You will learn how to apply key strategies for reducing your hospital’s cost and length of stay. In addition, you will learn how to appreciate the role of interdisciplinary care rounds in care coordination.  
• You will identify your hospital’s own areas of strength and weakness related to care coordination.
• You will understand the role of the RN case manager in care coordination. 

Webinar Agenda

• Care coordination is an often-forgotten role for hospital case managers.
• Care coordination impacts on length of stay and cost.
• There are many factors that negatively impact on care coordination
• Case managers can do many things to positively impact on care coordination.
• There are five key elements related to care coordination.
• Case managers should know the strategies for evaluating their hospital’s own areas of inefficiency.
• Effective time-out processes can help with care coordination outcomes.
• Rounds and huddles are the most effective way of coordinating care among and between all the interdisciplinary team members.
• Communication is an important strategy of ineffective care coordination. 

Webinar Highlights

• Understand the definition of care coordination 
• Review the five key elements of care coordination
• Relate care coordination to the role of the social worker and RN case manager
• Discuss strategies for incorporating care coordination into your daily practice
• Identify the ways in which care coordination helps manage cost and length of stay

Who Should Attend?

• Director of Case Management
• Director of Finance
• Case Managers
• Social Workers
• Vice President of Case Management
• Physician Advisor
• Director of Nursing