Case Management Nursing Career Profile

 If you're interested in a new direction for your nursing career and are interested in ensuring that patients and their families receive quality, cost-effective health care, then you might want to look into Case Management Nursing. Case Management Nursing focuses mainly on planning and managing all aspects of patient care and services for their assigned cases.

Case Management Nursing duties include assessing and monitoring patients, determining eligibility for treatments, making use of clinical pathways in order to determine whether the plan of care being provided meets the patient's needs, and arranging for additional services as needed in order to help patients achieve desired outcomes. A Case Management Nurse conducts research, analyzes data, and coordinates patient care with all members of the patient's health care team providing each patient with individual planning and planning in order to ensure optimum outcome while also seeking to ensure care and services provided are appropriate to patient needs and cost effective.

Case management nurses help patients and their families by making sure that procedures approved by their organizations hopefully lead to quantifiable results instead of unnecessary procedures without possible merit.

Case Management Nurses Help Achieve Positive Patient Outcomes

The main goals of a case management nurse is to make sure that the patient receives quality and appropriate care as well as the most cost effective services. This usually requires working directly with patients and/or their families, developing a professional relationship with them in order to perform assessments on the patient, as well as analysis of data. Once an assessment has been completed and all proper data has been collected, the case management nurse works in close collaboration with the patient's physician and all members of the health care team in order to coordinate and manage all aspects of that patient's care and services including arranging referrals as needed.

One of the ways you might expect to use your skills as a case management nurse is if a patient that is covered under a certain type of health insurance policy is asking for a certain surgical procedure that can improve their ailment. If it is a procedure that is not common or is very expensive, a case management nurse may contact the patient and the doctor and find out if there are benefits to performing this surgical procedure for the patient. This requires the case management nurse to collect information about the patient, do research on the surgical procedure and analyze other data relating to the procedure so that this information can be prepared and sent to a person qualified to make a decision on whether an insurance company or other agency will pay for the procedure.

Work Environment & Salary for Case Management Nurses

Case Management Nurses have the ability to practice as independent consultants or to work for hospitals, physicians, specialists, rehabilitation agencies, insurance companies, workman's comp providers, home health agencies, long term care facilities, private corporations, and for government agencies. Nurse Case Managers provide their services in the hospital setting, in outpatient settings, and also in the community.

One of the reasons to look into earning your certificate as RN Case Manager is its rather generous salary. The top tier of nursing case managers make well over $75,000 per year and those working for government agencies such as worker's compensation providers typically earn over $55,000 per year. Compensation usually varies by location, job skills and experience as well as the types of cases you handle. For instance, workers comp and managed care cases may be on the lower end of the pay scale, while employment at a large name corporate insurance office will pay much higher.

It's Never Too Late to Become a Case Management Nurse

If you are thinking about a career in case management nursing, one of the best ways to achieve this goal is by earning your Case Management Nursing certificate online. Kaplan University offers a totally self paced 100% online Case Management Nursing Certificate program that can be completed within twelve months at your convenience, providing you the ability keep your present job and income while becoming certified.

Kaplan University is fully accredited by the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, a regional accreditation commission recognized by the United States Department of Education, and was ranked as is America's #1 Ranked Online University according to the "Higher Education Survey Report", done by Robert W. Baird & Co., Feb. 2006.

Kaplan University's Case Management Certificate requires students to take 8 classes, including:

- Introduction to Case Management
- Case Management Process
- Case Management Tools
- Quality Measures
- Disease and Disability Management
- Case Management for Pediatric and Geriatric Populations
- Legal and Ethical Issues in Case Management
- Designing Case Management Models

If you are looking for an extremely challenging and fulfilling career helping patients and their families get the best possible care as well as making sure the medical procedures involved are appropriate as well as cost effective definitely look into the career of case management nursing.