What are the goals/outcomes of nursing case management?
The American Nurses Association defines the goals of case management as the provision of quality health care along a continuum with decreased fragmentation of care across health care settings, enhancement of the client’s quality of life with efficient utilization of patient care resources and cost containment. No matter where nursing case management is being applied in the acute care, home, or long-term setting, its underlying principles and goals are always consistent in that it is a system for providing patient care, and is designed to ensure that quality care is provided in the most cost-effective manner possible. This is to be accomplished by improving the processes of care delivery, to make them more efficient and therefore more effective. Case management is to ensure that quality is maintained and strives to improve outcomes. So, in a nutshell, the goal of your nursing case manager is to achieve positive patient outcomes and manage cost and quality of care. Issues to be considered are the effects on quality of life, what functional improvements may be achieved, anticipated increased survival, cost effectiveness, patient satisfaction, quality of care, compliance efforts, fostering of independence, increasing the chances of the patient’s ability to return to gainful employment, reduction of morbidity, reduction of mortality, increased ability to empower the patient to make informed decisions, and the feasibility and long-term goal to return the patient to as near pre-illness / pre-injury status as possible. Throughout the case management process, actual and potential barriers to positive and effective outcomes are identified with efforts made to eliminate them whenever possible.