The Future of Health Care
When change is the only option, smart, creative people rise to meet the challenge. Harmony has been exploring innovative ideas with clinical experts driven by a shared desire to improve delivery of care coordination services. In December, after months of discussion and dozens of small group trainings, we launched a proof of concept for a new service model called Dynamic Case Management.
While the sample size is small, the concept is real-world verified. Dynamic Case Management improves performance and lowers costs for hospitals. Over time, we believe this innovative approach to care coordination will become the standard.
Reinventing Case Management
The proverb “necessity is the mother of invention” is easy enough to comprehend. Countless examples of humankind’s resourcefulness are chronicled in written history and recent transformative events, which we have all experienced firsthand. When change is the only option, smart, creative people rise to meet the challenge.
The COVID-19 pandemic forced companies across the planet to adopt a virtual workforce strategy, one which was implemented almost overnight.
For many industries, the successful transition brought new operational realities to the forefront. As a result, as we enter 2023, every service-oriented company should be prepared to answer three major questions:
- Prior to the pandemic, what held back change in the organization — was it typical human aversion to change or something completely unforeseen?
- How did we take advantage of the new reality?
- How do we help customers meet the challenge of the new reality?
Dynamic Case Management: A transformative model for hospitals
The time has come for a new approach to hospital case management services. To date, most hospitals have adopted some form of the dyad (integrated) or triad (collaborative) model to deliver the major functions of patient care. In the dyad model, the case manager performs utilization management (UM) and discharge planning. In the triad model, one case manager performs UM, another performs discharge planning and a social worker addresses psychosocial issues.
Because of staffing shortages, hospitals have been forced to employ travelers or contract labor, which is expensive, to handle these functions. Consequently, many hospitals no longer can afford to efficiently and effectively provide case management services using either the dyad or triad model. In the real world, most hospitals use hybrid systems, which draw on strategies, methods and practices from both models, often to the detriment of one or more functions within departments.
“Those models are not practical in this day and age,” says Cari O'Leary, RN, and partner in the High Performance Interdisciplinary Rounds. “We want to transform those models by offering a solution we call Dynamic Case Management.”
