Continuum care and case management in acute care discharge planning

¶ … 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 through the identification and prevention of medical complications. 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 are assisted to develop plans of care for continual maintenance and improvement of health care, even upon discharge from the acute care setting (Felong, 2008). This process is also known as continuity of care since it's geared towards providing services that enable patients to become autonomous as possible. Since its inception, the concept has developed to an extent that it focuses on liaison with home health care, especially in facilities with hospital-owned home health care agencies.

Generally, the goal of discharge planning is to promote continuity of care, maximize the utilization of health care resources, and enhance the quality of care (Felong, 2008). However, this process has some major weaknesses because is a multidisciplinary process. Some of the major weaknesses of discharge planning as it is practiced in acute care settings include lack of communication or education, lack of discharge planners, limited availability of funding, and lack of placements. The other weaknesses are minimal support from the community, barriers to access, and poor policies and procedures.