To prepare for natural disasters such as hurricanes, community case managers must reach out to and support their patients who are elderly, disabled, or otherwise at risk. Disaster preparation is a huge endeavor for case managers.
This spring, CMS changed the scope of work for their Beneficiary and Family Centered Care Quality Improvement Organizations (BFCC-QIO) Livanta and Kepro, which became effective June 8. The QIOs’ responsibilities were narrowed to focus primarily on discharge appeals, quality complaints, and real-time advocacy for Medicare patients and families.
While the Violence Prevention Program at Johns Hopkins addresses a very specific population, many of the lessons learned can be applied to almost any patient who is hesitant to accept resources. Included in this article are some of the program’s tips and strategies that you can apply to some of your more challenging cases.
A June report by Kaiser Permanente found that not only do Americans believe that having social needs met—such as housing, food, and social support—is crucial to good health, but 68% of those surveyed reported that they had at least one social need unmet in the last year, and more than 25% of them said that unmet social need affected their health.
A case manager for the Johns Hopkins Hospital-Based Violence Intervention Program in Baltimore, Leonard Spain works with victims of violence, often gunshots and stabbings, presenting a host of special challenges.
Stephanie, a home care nurse case manager, follows patients with repeated readmissions, stabilizes them in the community, and prevents the readmissions from continuing. But with record-breaking temperatures approaching, Stephanie knows that helping her patients avoid readmission will be more challenging than usual.
Every director of case management faces the challenge of remaining current in an age of information overload. For some, this information explosion may cause work fatigue and anxiety. One way to stay afloat is to focus on one thing—Medicare.
Food insecurity is a common problem in the United States, affecting as many as one in eight Americans. It’s a problem that can cause health complications, compound existing ones, and ratchet up the cost of care for many patients.
