[msmel321]

I am new to HH(9 months) and am wondering how other agencies work their case managers....Ifeel that our company is messed up...I am a case manager in SE Alabama and cover 2 large counties...our company covers a total of 7 rural counties...the case managers do not make up their own schedule...the clinical supervisor and the LPN in the office make up the schedules daily...I have patients in my case load that i have never even seen but am expected to know everything about them...I have patients that live within a block from me and seem to never see them, instead, I travel 50 miles between patients and our LPNs see some patients the majority of the time we have them....I discharge patients that i have never seen before..we are responsible for all our own labs and contact with MDs..it is very frustrating to manage patients this way.Actually it is not possible in my view...we are also responsible for all tranfers and orders for each patient...at first i thought I could never catch up because i was new but after reading on this website I think it is just the company...any views or suggestions?...our census is at 140(not evenly distributed between 4 RNs) we have 4 RNs ,1 FT Lpn, 1 PRN LPN and 1 HHA

[TazziRN]

Okay.....we have 5-6 full time and part time RNs, four FT and PT LVNs, 5 PTs, and 1 HHA. All the RNs are case managers. We are in one county only but it's an ag county and can mean quite a bit of driving. We manage the cases that we open or are given to us right after opening, and we see them through to discharge. Even if the LVN sees the pt for me most of the time, I still have to make at least one visit every two weeks. The LVNs can call the docs but not without checking with the CM first. When there is a new open to do, Intake will find out who has the lightest schedule that day to do it and will also be in the geographical area.

If there are problems with pts, they are brought up each week at either the team conference or the Morbidity and Mortality conference so we can have brainstorming sessions to come up with solutions. Our supervisor stays in close touch with all of us so she knows if there are any problems that she needs to get involved in. We have a medical director that can step in if we have a problem with a doc (amazing wha courtesy phone calls can accomplish!).