Is your staffing ratio appropriate for your case management model?
Case managers may be working longer hours and have more responsibilities to help their hospital comply with health care reform initiatives, but before rushing to the C-suite to ask for more staff, case management directors should take a hard look at the roles and responsibilities of the department, experts say. They recommend: Look at your staffing ratio and determine if it is appropriate for your case management model and if it is in line with staffing ratios at similar hospitals with similar models. Make a list of all the tasks that case managers are asked to do and break out those that don't affect outcomes or cost of care and those that don't require licensure. Get these assigned to other employees. Before you approach management to ask for more staff, do your homework and have hard data to back up your request. Consider hiring case management extenders to take over clerical tasks and free up case managers to work at the top of their licenses.
D019090:Case Management / Q000458:organization & administration*; D017146:Models, Organizational; D010561:Personnel Staffing and Scheduling; D014481:United States