10 Best Practices for Telephonic Nurse Case Managers

Melissa Mills, BSN

Best Practices are procedures shown by research and experience to produce optimal results. These established standards are suitable for widespread adoption. Case management practices can vary from one specialty to the next. Some standards are always consistent for telephonic case management.

What are the best practices for telephonic case managers?

1. Protect Confidentiality

When you call a patient, you must ensure you have the correct person on the other end of the phone. It takes a bit more investigation when compared to face to face case management.

Before beginning any assessments, verify the identification of the patient. This requires you to confirm patient identifiers. These include name, date of birth, social security number, or address. Check with your facilities policy on which patient identifiers are acceptable.

2. Return of Calls Timely

This may seem like common sense. But, many patients report never receiving return calls from case managers. If someone takes the time to call you and leave a message, return their call. Even if it is for the 100th time this week.

3. Know Your Assessment Tools

There are standardized assessment tools for clinical practitioners. Standardized tests requires all test takers to answer the same questions in the same way. The results are then scored consistently.

Standardized assessments help you make the best clinical and professional decisions for patients. Scores are only a portion of the assessment and should never be used alone.

Understanding the rationale behind every question helps to ensure accuracy. Never leave assessment questions up for your own interpretation.

4. Get Certified

Most nurses turn to the Commission for Case Manager Certification (CCMC) for certification. CCMC is the gold standard. There are more than 42,000 board certified case managers in the U.S today. CCMC is the first and largest nationally accredited organization that certifies case managers. Check out CCMC today to become certified.

5. Be Emotionally Intelligent

Be attuned to your emotional intelligence. Listen to understand. Be aware of and control your own emotions. Learn to handle relationships with care and empathy.

6. Provide Individualized Care

All areas of case management use a case management plan. This plan consists of a short and long term goals and corresponding interventions. Most nurse case managers conduct an assessment to create the case management plan.

The plan requires collaborative interaction with the patient to ensure agreement. Collaboration helps to increase the chance of meeting goals.

The case management plan is the backbone of all good case managers. Without a plan, case managers would not be able to assist patients in meeting self-care goals.

7. Be Self-Directed

Telephonic case managers are autonomous. They are self-directed and independent. Most case managers enjoy the ability to manage their work and create their schedules.

8. Think Holistically

Case Managers provide holistic care. While providing post-surgical education, you would assess for comorbid conditions too. You would also assess the patient's mental and emotional status. This is holistic care. It gives the patient the ability to care for themselves holistically too.

9. Get Organized

All good case managers organize their work. Telephonic case managers will manage a caseload of 40-80 patients on average. This requires organizational and prioritization skills.

10. Use Teach-Back for Patient Education

As a telephonic case manager, you can't see your patients. You must rely heavily on your spoken words. Using the Teach-Back Method is a great way to ensure your patient understands self-care techniques. This requires that you ask the patient to state in their own words what they need to do to take care of their health.

This allows you to confirm that you have explained things in a way the patient understands.

Telephonic case management is a craft. You must be diligent, organized and savvy at many skills. These 10 evidence-based practices can help you be highly skilled at your job.

Do you have other practices as a telephonic nurse case manager that you think missed the list? Share them with me in the comments. I would love to hear how you keep yourself productive and organized daily.