Care Coordination: Strategies for Managing Cost and Length of Stay

This program will review the elements that most greatly impact cost and length of stay by focusing on care coordination as one of the key strategies for successful reductions of these metrics. Even CMS’s Spending per Medicare Beneficiary Measure, also known as the Efficiency Measure, holds your hospital accountable for these metrics. Care coordination, as one of the main roles of the RN case manager, is complex and includes many characteristics that encompass the role. It can be misunderstood or ignored completely as many case management departments focus primarily on utilization management and discharge planning.

To best appreciate care coordination’s importance, these important processes will be covered as well as those elements that have the greatest negative impact on care coordination. Those that have the greatest positive impact will be discussed in detail. Working with teams to enhance care coordination, as well as rounds and huddles, will be discussed. You will learn how to appreciate the role of interdisciplinary care rounds in care coordination. By planning for the day and for the stay, case managers facilitate resource management for the entire care team.

You will learn how to apply key strategies for reducing your hospital’s cost and length of stay. Participants will walk away with effective strategies for managing theses that transcend utilization review and discharge planning. Rather than thinking of care coordination as a siloed role, we will discuss how it folds into the other roles of case management and how each role plays off the other.

You will identify your hospital’s own areas of strength and weakness related to care coordination.

Finally, you will understand the role of the RN case manager and social worker in care coordination.

• Care coordination’s impact on the length of stay and cost
• Negative impacts on care coordination
• Positive impacts on care coordination
• Five key elements of care coordination
• Strategies for evaluating your hospital’s own areas of inefficiency
• Effective time-out processes
• Rounds and huddles

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? Do you know how to manage the cost per case as well as the length of stay by using care coordination strategies? As one of a case management professional’s key roles, you need to understand both the whys and the hows of care coordination.

• Director of Case Management
• Case Managers
• Social Workers
• Vice President of Case Management
• Directors of Nursing
• Directors of Quality
• Directors of Finance