Calling off-what are your company's policies?

[mclennan, BSN, RN]

My company has many regions. Each region tailors a lot of their protocols according to patient population and staffing. My region is very tiny and we lack clerical support. We do all telephonic case management.

We are trying to come up with ideas for how to cover one another when we call off sick. We are not allowed to share login info to the EMR, which is where we view our call queues. If someone calls off we have no way of knowing which patients require calls that day. I suggested keeping a handwritten log, with names of which patients are due for calls on which day at each of our desks so we wouldn't need to log into any computer if someone calls off. This was unanimously shot down by other staff saying "that's a lot of extra work."

Our IT department says they cannot grant anyone cross-access to EMR queues. We are stumped. Any ideas? How does your company handle covering for call offs for telephonic case management?

[Sam J.]

If that's their thinking, then it would follow that only one nurse should be allowed to access a hospital chart? Makes zero sense. What to do if a casemanager dropped dead? Went on a month vacation? Quit without notice? The patient goes without a casemanager??

IT can give surely give everybody their own access/log in information to access every patient's file, then each casemanager's activity can be monitored on each file, if they believe someone is up to hanky-panky.

[Sam J.]

On another note- how would the manager monitor or assess a casemanager's productivity, not being able to access that casemanager's files?

Call the other regions, ask them how they maintain work flow in the absence of any one, or more employees- surely this subject has come up before.

[mclennan, BSN, RN]

On another note- how would the manager monitor or assess a casemanager's productivity not being able to access that casemanager's files? Call the other regions, ask them how they maintain work flow in the absence of any one, or more employees- surely this subject has come up before.[/quote']

The other regions have clerical support staff who act as "assistants" to case managers and get a report at the end of the day on who needs calls the next day "just in case" of calling off. We don't have such staff.

Managers monitor productivity by a data collection mechanism tied only to the amount of calls we make and how long we are on the phones, that does not reveal patient info.

We are scrambling to come up with ideas!

[Sam J.]

Sounds like you work in a some type of a call center, not a case management company- case management is about providing appropriate care to patients while conserving sporifice resources, not about the number of phone calls made, even by clerical support. Why does such a place need casemanagers?

But since I see you've been in AN for so many years, maybe it's me who is lost, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.

[mclennan, BSN, RN]

No, I don't work in a call center. I'm an RN case manager and work for a large medical group. I float from inpatient locations to offices to hospitals to SNFs. I do transitional care management for patients newly discharged with complicated needs and high risk chronic conditions.

Any company that does telephonic CM must track productivity and readmission rates; we are trying to tailor a way to cover for call-offs within the limitations of our available technology.