New White paper Discusses How ED Case Managers Can Help Hospitals Achieve High Performance and Delivery of Quality Care
CHICAGO – Huron Consulting Group today released a Huron Healthcare white paper entitled, "Empowering Case Managers in the Emergency Department: A Strategic Role Benefits Patients, Care Teams, and Providers." Case managers play a vital role in reducing readmissions and achieving high quality, affordable, coordinated care in the emergency department (ED).
"Hospitals, health systems, and academic medical centers are under increased pressure to deliver effective, efficient, affordable care in their EDs and beyond," said Ryan Bengtson, managing director, Huron Healthcare. "These pressures stem from many forces – including changing reimbursement models, penalties tied to readmission, the increased importance of patient satisfaction, capacity management challenges, and competition pressures."
Readmission penalties, new links between patient satisfaction and reimbursement, competition, and other factors have focused heightened attention on case management at all points of entry. Empowered and effectively utilized ED case managers can help address challenges such as delivering care efficiently and effectively, smoothly handling transitions, and fully engaging patients and family members as part of the care team.
In this white paper, Huron Healthcare's Clinical solution team discuss how ED case managers can play a vital role in achieving high performance and delivering quality care in the ED, including:
· Details of a case manager's optimal roles and responsibilities in the ED
· Why and how a closer working relationship between case managers and ED care teams impacts care coordination across the care continuum
· Care managers' impact on care transitions and readmissions
"In the absence of ED flow rounds, care team members often find it difficult to ensure that the entire care team is on the same page regarding when and how a patient will transition out of the ED," says Becca LaFond, senior director, Huron Healthcare. "Without a proactive approach, it's difficult to ensure that all the necessary steps have been taken to optimize next steps – whether that's scheduling patient follow-up appointments after discharge, or requesting an inpatient bed."
To view the white paper, visit: http://www.
Huron Healthcare recently published a case study on ED flow at the University of Virginia Medical Center; to view: http://www.
Earlier this year, Huron Healthcare released the newest edition of the CEO Forum report. The report shares insights from hospital, health system and academic medical center CEOs about issues facing the healthcare industry. Read the 2013 CEO Forum report and learn more at: http://www.healthcareceoforum.
If you are interested in speaking with Ryan Bengtson, Becca LaFond or another one of Huron Healthcare's experts on the issues impacting hospitals, health systems or academic medical centers, please contact:
Jennifer Frost Hennagir
312-880-3260
jfrost-hennagir@
Jenna Nichols
312-880-5693
jnichols@huronconsultinggroup.
About Huron Healthcare
Huron Healthcare is the premier provider of performance improvement and clinical transformation solutions for hospitals and health systems. By partnering with clients, Huron delivers strategy and solutions that improve quality, increase revenue, reduce expenses, and enhance physician, patient, and employee satisfaction across the healthcare enterprise. Clients include leading national and regional integrated healthcare systems, academic medical centers, community hospitals and physician practices. Modern Healthcare ranked Huron Healthcare third on its 2012 list of the largest healthcare management consulting firms. Learn more at www.huronconsultinggroup.com/
About Huron Consulting Group
Huron Consulting Group helps clients in diverse industries improve performance, reduce costs, leverage technology, process and review large amounts of complex data, address regulatory changes, recover from distress and stimulate growth. Our professionals employ their expertise in administration, management, finance and operations to provide our clients with specialized analyses and customized advice and solutions that are tailored to address each client's particular challenges and opportunities to deliver sustainable and measurable results. The Company provides consulting services to a wide variety of both financially sound and distressed organizations, including healthcare organizations, leading academic institutions, Fortune 500 companies, governmental entities and law firms. Huron has worked with more than 95 of the top 100 research universities, more than 400 corporate general counsel, and more than 385 hospitals and academic medical centers. Learn more at www.huronconsultinggroup.com.
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