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"When faced with an increasing number of immigrants who don't have funding for post-acute care, hospital case managers and social workers must use their ingenuity to come up with creative options that lessen the financial burden of care," says Deborah Cruze, JD, MA, program associate, health sciences and ethics at Emory University's Center for Ethics in Atlanta.
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For Fred Nenner, MSW, and the rest of the staff at Lutheran Medical Center in New York City, successfully returning injured immigrant patients to their family in their native country is one of the most challenging and rewarding jobs they tackle.
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A program that pairs new case managers with a preceptor for eight weeks and a mentor for a year has increased staff satisfaction and reduced turnover for the case management department at Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte, NC.
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Following a systemwide initiative, Catholic Healthcare Partners has reduced its average length of stay by 2%, potentially avoiding 18,000 hospital days in the multistate hospital system with headquarters in Cincinnati.
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Within 45 days after daily multidisciplinary patient care conferences were instituted at North Fulton Regional Hospital, the hospital's average length of stay dropped by more than a day and excess days decreased by more than 300 days within the first quarter of implementation.
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This spring during the H1N1 epidemic, registrations through EDs increased dramatically nationwide. The processes of virtually every patient access department were put to the test.
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By assigning an anticipated date of discharge to every patient within 24 hours of admission, the clinical resources management staff at St. Joseph's Hospital in Tampa, FL, have been able to shave three hours off the hospital's average discharge time, freeing up beds and dramatically decreasing the amount of time patients wait for a bed in the emergency department.
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A mentoring program for staff members who have already completed orientation is seen as a key strategy in the programs of Carolinas Medical Center (CMC) in Charlotte, NC, which recently was named the winner of the 2009 Franklin Award of Distinction by The Joint Commission and the American Case Management Association.
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With a vaccine shortage projected for novel H1N1 influenza A, only the highest priority groups are likely to be offered the shot when initial lots are cleared for distribution this fall.
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In today's health care environment, hospitals are challenged on all fronts. The Recovery Audit Contractors (RACs) are carefully scrutinizing hospital records, looking for inappropriate admissions, incorrect level of care, and inaccurate coding in the charts of Medicare patients.
