Nearly every day, case management impacts the minds of patients and caregivers, whether directly or indirectly. By working as patient and family representatives and serving as a bridge between the hospital, clinicians, insurers, and the communities, case managers play a crucial role in comprehensive healthcare in hospitals.
The position of the case manager is difficult enough without the added complexity of COVID-19. Rapid and frequent changes in the hospital environment and discharge planning make the case manager's role difficult.
If hospitals do not plan their emergency case management methods by such a period, they could overburden them in the fall with COVID-19 cases, flu, and children's respiratory infections.
Isn't this an undeniable truth of this Pandemic Period?
With the current COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare facilities in the United States are preparing for the worst.
The involvement of case management implementation is problematic due to rapid and ongoing changes in the healthcare atmosphere and discharge planning, which has been made even more difficult by COVID-19. On the other hand, case managers navigate this challenging field with kindness and concern at every turn.
Case management is used to handle an emergency case which means patients who have experienced stressful experiences or are dealing with difficult living situations. Still, when the “emergency” is a worldwide pandemic, the task becomes even more complex.
Case management Software must discover innovative and creative ways to reviewing data, risk stratification risk, evaluate, schedule, coordinate care, and execute follow-up, care transitions, communications, and assessments to meet the demands of the hour. Any existing task that can be done by telephony, other technology, or artificial intelligence should be implemented efficiently.
The epidemic has presented many problems to case management and numerous possibilities to develop new, creative approaches to meeting patients' needs. Our healthcare providers had to first learn how to distinguish between COVID-19-infected patients and how to prohibit the virus from spreading.
The main methods of preventing the transmission of the disease are social. They rely on changing or adopting new behaviors like wearing facial covers, practicing excellent hand hygiene, and self-monitoring symptoms. To help patients and families acquire these new habits, case managers have to enhance their coaching skills.
Many patients have been separated from their families due to social alienation when that connection is so important. It's also made it difficult to keep appointments with physicians after being discharged.
Case managers have started understanding more about remote communication and telehealth technologies to help bridge these gaps. They're training patients how to utilize new technologies and devices in some circumstances so they can speak with loved ones while in the hospital and be ready for telehealth visits following discharge.
Telehealth services used in case management are as follows:
Virtual consultations are typically brief and patient-initiated conversations with a healthcare professional, usually over the mobile device.
e-Visits, which are similar to patient-initiated conversations with a healthcare professional but are conducted through an online platform and do not require the parties to engage face to face; and
Telehealth visits entail a real-time interactive audiovisual modality between the patient and the health care practitioner via telecommunications technology. The practitioner is usually the one who initiates these.
CONCLUSION:
The COVID-19 pandemic is a one-of-a-kind issue requiring specialized healthcare providers and leaders, including case managers.The COVID-19 situation has demanded the production of “order despite chaos” and a sense of “comfort amidst feelings of fear, anxiety, and uncertainty,” according to previous experience. We've learned so far from this worldwide pandemic that case management will never be the same. It will improve and become more effective.
The advanced specialty practice of case management will benefit significantly from the revolutionary care sites and conceptual understanding to care requirement that has been developed on genuine and purposeful collaborations across numerous healthcare settings and diverse specialists across the spectrum of health & human services.
