By Jennifer Moore Ballentine
It’s National Case Management Week and, fittingly, we want to celebrate you—the case managers, care managers and care coordinators whose work is so critical to the health and well-being of our most vulnerable populations. We’re so grateful to you and the organizations that employ you.
Care managers are among the greatest champions of an emerging healthcare movement built around the patient—or, more accurately, the person. What does this person and family value most, what inspires them, and what challenges and barriers must be addressed so they can optimize their health and quality of life?
This whole-person, patient-centered approach sounds an awful lot like palliative care, albeit applied along a broader swath of the care continuum. In fact, many case management patients have complex medical needs linked to serious or chronic illness. These are the same patients who will ultimately benefit from palliative care.
The two fields share another connection: a significantly understaffed workforce. A considerable shortfall in palliative care providers, projected to dramatically worsen as our population ages, is what led to the creation of the CSU Institute for Palliative Care in 2012. A similar and equally daunting gap in the care management workforce prompted the Institute and key funders like the California Health Care Foundation and the SCAN Foundation to create Care Excellence a few years later.
Since its launch, Care Excellence has equipped more than 1,600 new or experienced care managers—mostly working in large health plans—with foundational skills ranging from motivational interviewing, advance care planning, collaborative problem solving, and holistic health management, to advanced skills such as disease-specific interventions and complex care coordination. The healthcare professionals we serve have completed a collective 10,000 modules of care management training during that time and used that training to impact countless patients and families.
Thankfully, we’re just getting started. In the coming year, through a partnership with the California Hospital Association, and with support from both CHCF and the SCAN Foundation, and several other generous funders, we’ll launch a new curriculum designed specifically to enhance the skills of hospital care managers whose challenges include engaging and activating patients stuck in the revolving door of home-hospital-SNF-home-and so on, or facing the crossroads of a new medical crisis.
All this education is designed specifically for you, to improve your life and work and to benefit those you so passionately support. To underscore our commitment to you, we’re offering a 15 percent discount on all Care Excellence online courses this week only in honor of National Case Management Week. We’ve also got some great free resources, including our new eBook on practicing gratitude–a powerful tool for avoiding burnout and building resiliency.
We are so excited about the future of case management, and passionate about our partnership with you. Thanks for letting us serve you.