Teaching Health Care Quality to Care Managers

It is important for care managers to know and understand how their daily work is linked to health care quality.  Everyday, care managers help patients to access health care services and social services in order to help them meet their goals in life.  Health care quality is not only related to clinical measures, it also relates to non-clinical goals and to patient's safety.  knowing and understanding for care managers about the work they do and how is directly connected to the patient's health care and safety is crucial.

If you are a care manager or are responsible for a care coordination program, how do you train your care managers to identify clinical measures and safety measures associated with the daily services they provide to their patients?  Do you spend time doing in-service about health care quality, or do you use existing opportunities in your practice such as HEDIS measures? What I have experienced in my work with care managers that do not have clinical background, is that we must remember to teach and test their knowledge and understanding in how to structure the patient's clinical and non-clinical goad with health care quality.  The reality is that not all practices have the financial resources to hire RNs or other clinicians to perform the work as a care manager.  This is  a challenge that many practice phase and it is only to the patient best interest that we train non-clinician care managers to know the basics and build confidence around health care quality.

Here are some suggested activities:

• Select a QI project, for example hospital readmission, diabetes A1c control or last full eye exam.
• Meet with the care managers and explain the project from A to Z.
• Develop a QI data collection tool.
• Explain how they will go about collecting data for a baseline and what the sample size means.
• Do not assume all care managers may know bout QI projects processes
• Stay true to your periodic data review and provide feedback to the care managers on what the data tells you.
• Identify a champion in the team that will remind care managers to monitor patients progress and document data.
• Assist care managers to partner with patient's primary provider on the QI project to monitor the clinical interventions and the non-clinical interventions that help patients meet their goals.

Of course, this is an ongoing education and training task for the care managers, but it is very important.

I welcome you to share your own experiences with QI project and getting care managers involve!

Helen Dao, MHA

helen@daoconsultingservices.com

www.daoconsultingservices.com