¶ … Management: Concept of Continuum of Care in Case Management:

Health care organizations are usually faced with several critical challenges in their daily operations such as the ever-increasing demand for safe and quality care services, technological changes, and rising costs. One of the major concerns of these organizations is how to increase improved patient outcomes while maintaining or lessening the costs of these services. In order to address this concern, some organizations have adopted an integration of high level of functionality throughout the whole scale of care coordination. This process has also involved the establishment of case management program to provide specialized care management services to individuals who are vulnerable to high costs of care or tragic illness or injuries.

In such situations, case management enables nurse educators to encourage the effective use of care services, enhance patient outcomes, and maintain access while containing costs ("Case Management," n.d.). Consequently, effective case management helps in lessening health care costs...

In order to achieve effective case management, the concept of continuum of care is used in the process. The case manager works with patients in the whole care continuum on each aspect of treatment setting and payment sources.
The concept of continuum of care is used in case management to identify gaps in the efficiency and effectiveness of treatment to eliminate the clinical and psychosocial obstacles to recovery and strengthen customer satisfaction or patient outcomes ("Case Management," n.d.). During this process, continuum of care is also used by the case manager in problem-solving through nationally recognized standards to accomplish the best results. Cost containment across the care continuum is achieved through providing appropriate treatment in the most suitable way, at the most suitable time, and the best probable costs.

Weakness of Discharge Planning in Acute Care Settings:

As one of the major elements in nursing for a long time, discharge planning is described as the process through which patients…