Hospital Case Managers: how does your department handle weekends?

[RNbellashadow]

Hi. If you're a hospital RN Case Manager, would you please share how your hospital handles case management needs on the weekends. Do RN Case Managers work rotating weekends? Do you have weekend warriors that work the weekends? Are priorities different on the weekends? What are typical case loads on the weekends? Thank you!

[2ndChance]

I just started a new case manager position. I am a weekender, meaning I work every Sat, Sun, Mon. We also have weekenders who do Fri, Sat, Sun and I overlap Sat, Sun with them. Right now, we are hiring more weekend staff so the weekday case managers have to come in from 8-12 on Saturdays; they rotate this duty and I'm not sure how they do it. I have worked both weekdays and weekends and I would say weekends are much harder. More putting out fires, doing things at the last minute for patients and units I'm unfamiliar with. Many of the resources available during the weekday are closed on weekends and that adds to the workload because I can't delegate as much. We also have to answer a rotating pager and you never know what's coming next. Discharges are a priority instead of assessments. I am not sure if I will move to weekdays someday but because of family scheduling I need a weekend schedule right now.

[Mocha92, BSN, RN]

I work at a hospital and we rotate weekends; it usually falls around every 3 months depending on staffing. our director plans to hire a case manger to focus on working weekends to help out. It is becoming quite overwhelming for one case manager. We do have a social worker/discharge planner that helps with assessments and discharge arrangements.

The main focus of the case manager on the weekend is the observation patients and 0-1 day inpatient admissions, which all require daily reviews. That could average around 30-40 patients. We give out the Medicare letters. Arrange any hospital transfers. Usually our portable phones are ringing off the hook with social issues on the weekend. We do have a case manager as well in the ED that usually works a 12 hour shift that assists when available as needed.

[KelRN215, BSN, RN]

At the hospital I worked at (not as a CM, I was a staff nurse there for 5 years and then a home infusion liaison who worked closely with the inpatient CMs), there were 2 CMs on the weekends and they were there from 8am-12pm. My impression was that it was a lot of, as someone else said, putting out fires. As in, no one told the full-time CM that Johnny needed to go home with an NG tube and needed an enteral company and home nursing and then the team decides on Saturday that they want to send him home today. When I was a home care manager and had to take on-call I got calls for lots of referrals like that from the weekend CMs. Not everyone worked weekends, there were per diems and some full-time people who wanted to do it so they volunteered. That's how I understood it anyway.