Case Management Advisor – December 1, 2011
December 1, 2011
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As healthcare reform evolves, CM opportunities are increasing
As payers and providers grapple with ways to ensure that people obtain the healthcare services they need to stay healthy and to keep rising costs down, it's a good time to be a case manager. -
CM provides complex medical management
When Jan T. Homan, RN, BSN, was a home health nurse, she encountered several "revolving door" patients who would receive home health services for six weeks, keep their chronic condition under control for a few months, then end up back in the hospital and be discharged again with home health services. -
Immigrants have social, healthcare challenges
The key to managing the care of a multicultural population is to understand the people with whom you are working and to be aware of the challenges they face, says Sherry Rumbaugh, RN, director of care coordination for Passport Health Plan, a Medicaid health plan with headquarters in Louisville, KY. -
Advance directives and end-of-life expenditures
Medicare patients with advance directives specifying limits in treatment who lived in regions with higher levels of end-of-life spending were less likely to have an in-hospital death, averaged significantly lower end-of-life Medicare spending, and had significantly greater odds of hospice use than decedents without advance directives in these regions, according to a study in a recent issue of the The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). -
Smart phone apps to medical monitors
An iPhone app that measures the user's heart rate is not only a popular feature with consumers, but it sparked an idea for a researcher at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), in Worcester, MA, who is now turning smart phones, and eventually tablet devices, into sophisticated medical monitors able to capture and transmit vital physiological data. -
Stroke patients follow up after motivational talk
Even though many Americans learn through community health screenings that they are at high risk for having a stroke, they rarely follow up with their doctor for care. -
Patients at risk for medication stoppage
According to a report1 from the The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), patients discharged from acute care hospitals might be at risk for unintentional discontinuation of medications prescribed for chronic diseases. The report says that the intensive care unit (ICU) might pose an even greater risk because of the focus on acute events and the presence of multiple transitions in care. -
Frequent office visits improvements in diabetes
Visiting a primary care clinician every two weeks was associated with greater control of blood glucose, blood pressure, and cholesterol levels among patients with diabetes, according to a report1 in a recent issue of Archives of Internal Medicine. -
Transition intervention lowers readmissions
Medicare spends about $17 billion a year on hospital readmissions that could have been prevented, experts say.