Upcoming Webinar(s):

Breakthroughs: Strategic Solutions for Readmission Challenge

Using Data and QIOs to Reduce Avoidable Readmissions

Wednesday, May 22, 2013
12:00-1:30 p.m. (ET)

Empirical data shows that avoidable readmissions are caused for many reasons and involve multiple providers across multiple settings. To understand this complex problem and develop strategies to address them, health systems and payers need to focus not only on what is going on within their hospital walls but also on what is taking place after the patient re-enters the community.

Join us on May 22, 2013, from 12:00-1:30pm ET to learn from professionals working at the point of care who are making progress in identifying patients at risk for readmissions and working together within their community networks through their quality improvement organizations to analyze and understand the reasons for readmissions – and, most important, to develop strategies and solutions that can reduce unnecessary readmissions.

The Medical Home and Accountable Care:

Defining Teams, Ensuring Responsibilities

Thursday, May 30, 2013
2:00-3:30 p.m. (ET)

The ongoing debate over healthcare reform in the United States has expanded from targeted concerns about the millions of Americans without health insurance to broader consideration of gaps in quality, rising health care costs, and the structure of a system that has struggled to address either problem.

Physicians, nurses, case managers, social workers and pharmacists are stepping up as core members of the care coordination team leading the charge in transforming the delivery of care to ensure care is coordinated, safe, efficient and effective in meeting the health and wellness needs of consumers throughout communities. To accomplish this, like a sports team, all members are accountable for the work they do in the process.

Join us on May 30th from 2:00-3:30pm (EST) to learn from leaders who represent payers, providers and communities who have accepted accountability for transforming the delivery of care and ensuring the system meets the diverse needs of consumers. They will share strategies, outcomes and resources that you can use to ensure your organization is on track.

Webinars Available ON DEMAND

Empowering Patients with Shared Decision Making

Putting Patient Preferences First for High-Quality Healthcare

Tuesday, April 30, 2013
2:00-3:30 p.m. (ET)

Major discrepancies exist between patient preferences and the medical care they receive for many common conditions. Shared decision making (SDM) is a process where a patient and clinician, faced with more than one medically acceptable treatment option, jointly decide which option is best based on current evidence and the patient’s needs, preferences and values.

Join us on April 30, 2013, from 2:00-3:30pm ET when we will bring leading professionals to discuss shared decision making and how it is changing the delivery of care by empowering patients to be active participants in their care decisions.

Improving Medication Management, Reducing Readmissions:

How Community Pharmacists and Case Managers Can Achieve Enhanced Quality, Improved Outcomes

High hospital readmission rates are a key contributor to rising healthcare costs in the U.S. New government payment reforms are tackling the problem by penalizing hospitals for such readmissions, and innovative providers are responding with better planning and follow-up care after a patient is discharged. Medication management by health care teams is at the heart of this effort. Join us on April 17th as we learn about the collaboration between hospitals, case mangers and community pharmacists and the innovative work they are doing to engage patients at the point of care and the important outcomes that are occurring as a result of this unique collaboration.

Telephone Triage:

Opportunities and Risks for Care Management

Telephone triage is taking place in primary care settings, managed care organizations, health systems, call centers, emergency departments and other care settings where nurses talk to patients over the telephone to answer questions, explain resources and gain direction that can direct patients to appropriate levels of care that can improve the transitions of care.

Newsflash: CMS Now Reimbursing for Care Coordination:

Everything You Need to Know About the New CMS Codes

Recognizing the cost associated with avoidable hospital readmissions, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) passed a rule that went into effect on January 1, 2013, that will allow Medicare to reimburse for “Transitional Care Management” (TCM) services that support healthy transitions after hospital stays.

What does this mean? In short, it may have a profound effect on physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, pharmacists, nurses, case managers, social workers and others responsible for care coordination in physicians’ practices, hospitals, medical homes, managed care organizations and other settings across the healthcare continuum.

The Language of Engagement

Communication Skills Key to Patient Adherence and Outcomes

While no single intervention strategy can improve the adherence of all patients, decades of research studies agree that successful attempts to improve patient adherence depend upon a set of key factors. These include realistic assessment of patients' knowledge and understanding of the regimen, clear and effective communication between health professionals and their patients, and the nurturing of trust in the therapeutic relationship.

The Role of Specialty Practices in the Medical Home

How Specialists Are Integrating Care and Providing Better Patient Outcomes

The specialty medical home model is a new and emerging area specialty providers see as a way to provide safe, quality and efficient medical care to patients with long-term, chronic conditions. Join us on February 14, 2013, to learn how three specialty practices made the transition to a patient-centered healthcare home and are showing positive outcomes in meeting the needs of their patients by improving clinical outcomes and containing healthcare costs.

Transitions of Care: Case Management in the Lead

Strategies for Providers Seeking to Boost Patient Transitions Across Settings

Statistics show that nearly one in five Medicare patients discharged from the hospital is readmitted within 30 days due to inadequate transitions of care. This translates to approximately 2.6 million seniors at a cost of over $26 billion every year. Medicare is not the only payer struggling, as readmission rates are also high for patients covered by Medicaid and private insurance, so the pressure is on from all sectors to improve transitions of care.

Integrating Behavioral Health in the Medical Home

Implementation Strategies for Case Managers and Fellow Team Members

Today, research has improved our ability to recognize, diagnose, and treat medical and behavioral health conditions effectively if healthcare professionals work together as a team to fully address the wide range of psychosocial issues that are presented by the patients. Join us on January 16, 2013, from 2:00-3:30pm (ET) when we bring together industry leaders who have expertise in new models of care integrating medical and behavioral health through team based care coordination.

Calculating Caseloads

Achieving Enhanced Case Management

This webinar will shed light on the latest research in caseloads and offers the advice and insights of experts in the field of case management and caseload optimization

Solving Medication Management

A Team-Based Approach to Nullifying Non-adherence

Learn about innovative patient-centered medication management programs making strides in improving medication adherence. The faculty will provide practical tips that you and your team take away and implement in your setting. Read More>>

Dynamic Cultural Competency: Quality-Boosting Efforts

Learn How to Enhance Patient Engagement, Improve Health Literacy and Boost Overall Outcomes

A dynamic Case In Point Webinar where we will hear from an esteemed panel about the need for raising awareness and developing tools to improve cultural awareness and health literacy throughout the care continuum.

Creating Powerful Discharge Planning

How Superior Discharge Planning Avoids Penalties and Promotes Quality Healthcare

Starting a robust discharge planning program – or strengthening an existing one – can produce benefits far beyond a smooth and seamless transition for a patient. Top-flight discharge planning can boost a patient’s adherence and preparedness, streamline follow-up care and reduce costly readmissions, improving patient and family satisfaction and saving hospitals and facilities large sums of money. Read More>>

Chronic Disease: 8 Change Concepts

How the Medical Home Enhances the Treatment of Patients with Chronic Disease

Experts share how payers and other organizations are designing programs to expand the transformation of the medical home in their states through collaboration, training and sharing of resources.

Accountable Care: Taking the Lead

How Care Management Fits Within the Booming ACO Model

In this webinar, three professionals whose organizations and healthcare systems are designing programs to bend the cost curve and improve quality within the Accountable Care models that have care management as the infrastructure.) Read More>>

Health Reform's Impact on Case Management

Ongoing Challenges and Opportunities in Case Management and Care Coordination

Join us for an in-depth exploration of the key aspects of health reform that are impacting and will continue to impact the practice areas of case management and care coordination.

Boosting Quality Process Measures: Steps to Success for Your Hospital

Become a Leader and Strengthen Your Reimbursement Level

This is Part 2 of the series: Mastering Hospital Value-Based Purchasing (You can access Part 1, Improving HCAHPS: Satisfying Patients - and Your Bottom Line, and gain 20% savings on the bundle.) Read More>>

Constructing the Medical Home: Bolstering Care, Outcomes and Transitions with a Multidisciplinary Team

Harness the Strength of the Medical Home Team for Best-Case Outcomes

In this webcast, we bring together a team of professionals embedded into a medical home practice to learn how they are changing the delivery of care one patient at a time by communicating effectively, and working together as a team by utilizing their individual expertise and taking the time to understand their patient's needs. Read More>>

Improving HCAHPS: Satisfying Patients - and Your Bottom Line

Learn Strategies to Achieve Optimal Reimbursement Rates

This is Part 1 of the series: Mastering Hospital Value-Based Purchasing (You can access Part 2, Boosting Quality Process Measures: Steps to Success for Your Hospital, and gain 30% savings on the bundle.) Read More>>

The Transformative Power of Health Coaching: A Pathway to Health and Wellness

Learn How Health Coaching Provides an Answer to Modern Healthcare Dilemmas

Learn about the science and practice of health and wellness coaching as well as the competencies and the outcomes that can be generated when coaching is incorporated as part of care coordination by the healthcare team. Read More>>

Managing Hospital Discharge For Readmissions Success

Detailing Case Management Interventions to Halt Avoidable Readmissions

Learn how three organization are working to reduce avoidable admissions and put themselves in line to receive incentives that will be available through Medicare and other payers in the near future who put measures into place as part of quality improvements efforts to improve processes, reduce avoidable readmissions and transition patients effectively and efficiently across the care continuum. Read More>>

Using Care Coordination to Cut Costs

How Coordinated Care Delivers Outcomes in the Medical Home

Join us for a discussion with three leaders who will discuss care coordination and preventive strategies in the Patient Centered Health Care Home. Bring your questions and your ideas to share so that together we can better understand the concept of care coordination and the impact it can have on the healthcare system. Read More>>

The Medical Home: Redefining Chronic Disease Management

The crisis is clear -- chronic diseases are crushing healthcare. Chronic diseases, such as heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes and arthritis, are among the most common, costly and preventable of all health problems in the U.S. In terms of cost, we know that health costs are growing faster than employee wages and the economy at large. An aging population virtually guarantees that the problem will only continue to escalate. Read More>>

Coordinating Care for Older Adult Surgery Patients

he US’s older adult population, those 65 and older, is approximately 40 million and expected to nearly double by 2030. The program is presented by Judy Dahle, an experienced OR nurse and gerontologist who will discuss the challenges this population brings, including physiological change, medication management, sensory deficits, discharge planning, and more.

Medical Home and the EHR: Creating 21st Century Solutions

In our continued series on the Patient Centered Health Care Home, we will bring together a panel who will share insights advancements in the medical home and the use of outcomes-boosting health IT solutions.

RACs, MACs, MICs, QICs, ZPICs

Know What They Mean and Limit Your Financial Risk

Navigating the federal auditing bodies – or what seems like a large cup of alphabet soup – is enough to make your head spin. In the face of these auditing bodies, case managers stand at the brink of a tremendous opportunity -- to make an impact within their organization by learning more about these new and changing entities and knowing the value in understanding the financial risk they pose to their organizations.

Revolutionizing Patient Engagement

How a Core Component of the Medical Home Can Transform Healthcare

In our continued series on the Patient Centered Health Care Home, we will bring together a panel who will share insights into advocacy and patient engagement advances.

Boosting Outcomes in the Medical Home Through Case Management

Learn the Key Responsibilities of Case Managers in the Medical Home Model

Join us for this groundbreaking webinar as we explore the role, function, competencies and value a case manager brings to the medical home model. If you are a physician contemplating practice transformation or looking for ways to better manage complex patients, or if you are a health plan or an individual case manager who wants to learn more about the dynamic role the medical home will play in transforming the healthcare system.

Curing Hospital Readmissions

As Penalties Loom, Learn the Strategies of Real-Time Monitoring and Early Interventions Learn from an esteemed faculty who at the forefront of improving the delivery of care for patients at risk about innovative ways for reducing avoidable readmissions

The Role of Managed Care in the Medical Home

Providing a Lifeline for Primary Care Practices

This webinar will bring together a team from the Health Plan of Michigan to discuss the success they have seen in improving care for their members as well as raising satisfaction levels for primary care physician practices as they have transitioned to the patient-centered health care home.

Tamperproof: Securing Medication Reconciliation

What You Need to Know to Improve Adherence and Enhance Patient Safety

Since 2000, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has received thousands of reports of medication errors. According to The Joint Commission’s Journal on Quality and Patient Safety, “more than 40 percent of medication errors are believed to result from inadequate reconciliation in handoffs during admission, transfer and discharge of patients.”

The Future of Case Management Is Now: Investigating New Models and Trends

Improving the Delivery of Care Through Coordinated Paradigms

In honor of Case Management Week, Case In Point has brought together three leaders in tune with trends and strategies that are changing the face of healthcare delivery – all from the perspective of new-age case management programs and protocols

How To Implement a Medical Home

Strategies for Providers, Payers and Involved Practitioners

In this training session, brought to you by URAC, the leader in quality accreditation programs, you will hear from leaders in medical home development – from both payer and provider settings – in order to understand best practices for implementation, strategies for reimbursement and incentives, and the unique role of case managers within the PCHCH.

Join an enlightening, 90-minute training session on advancements in the medical home model and learn from frontline trendsetters how to make the PCHCH model work in your practice, organization or setting.

Observation Services: How Case Managers Can Lead the Way

Creating an Action Plan for Proper Documentation, Billing and Compliance

When it comes to observation, reimbursement, compliance and patient satisfaction are three of the biggest issues at stake – and all three are linked to the financial viability of acute care facilities. While the observation services designation is driven by a physician, the surrounding case management staff has the opportunity to ensure that documentation is correct, that services are appropriate and that the patient is aware of their situation and satisfied with their care.

Join the Case In Point Webinar series as a faculty of case management leaders identify the leading strategies, teams, processes and programs created to ensure compliance and drive optimal reimbursement from payers, all while maintaining tools and tips for patient satisfaction.

Caseloads Matter: Navigating the Art and Science of Caseload Management

How to Create an Ideal Case Size in Case Management

While ideal caseloads may differ, the important thing is to understand why they differ. Bringing together experts behind the latest research into both the art and science of caseload capacity, the Case In Point Webinar series presents Caseloads Matter: Navigating the Art and Science of Caseload Management, which will shed light on how you can successfully navigate caseloads.

Value Based Purchasing - How It Will Change the Status Quo

Why Case Management Is the Constant in Healthcare Change

Gather your team to participate in the July 27, 2011, Case In Point Webinar, Case Management: The Constant in Health Care Change: How Value Based Purchasing will Change the Status Quo to learn how Value Based Purchasing will change the way each healthcare professional and patient participates in health and healthcare.

Pituitary Disorders

Clinical and Mental Health Challenges to their Diagnosis and Treatment

Research shows a greater prevalence of pituitary and other neuroendocrine disorders than previously known. This webinar lays out a broad overview of common pituitary disorders, including but not limited to the clinical presentation and diagnosis of functioning and non-functioning pituitary tumors, their treatment and immediate post-operative complications.

Securing Care Transitions to Prevent Avoidable Readmissions

How Strong Transitions of Care Boost Quality, Save Costs

When a patient moves through the healthcare system from one point to the next, the gaps between care points can swallow the patient and turn a sound care plan into a less-than-desirable situation – where poor medication adherence, a lack of follow-up care and, what’s worse, costly readmissions prevail. But a transition point doesn’t have to be a gaping hole.

Learn about effective discharge plans, in-facility workflow plans, communication strategies and other best practices that have proven to boost the strength of transitions of care.

New Regulations of Medical Loss Ratio

An Opportunity for Case/Care Managers To Demonstrate Outcomes

New regulations issued by the Department of Health and Human Services require health insurers to spend 80-85% of consumers' premiums on direct care for patients and efforts to improve care quality. What does this mean to professionals involved in care coordination? It means professionals will have to clearly demonstrate how the work they do contributes to the improvement in direct care to patients and quality improvement.

This webinar brings together four diverse professionals involved in care coordination at the point of care who will demonstrate how the work they do improves the care patients receive across the care continuum.

Cumulative Stress: Reversing the Trend in Healthcare Professionals

Strategies To Enhance Employee and Organizational Health

A complex and demanding healthcare system has heightened the stress levels of our healthcare professionals. The consequences of this stress result in real and potential costs – from a personal cost to the professional, a financial cost to the organization, and an overall quality cost to the patient. At a time when organizations are striving to improve transitions of care, ensure quality and safety, and reduce escalating costs, having a healthy, focused and productive workforce is critical. How can this be achieved?

Easing Chronic Disease Through Patient-Centered Care

News Skills for the Care Coordination Team

The challenge of living with chronic illness isn't always apparent to the patient when first diagnosed. It takes time for the patient to understand their illness, the treatment options available, and how living with the aftermath of catastrophic or chronic illness will affect the patient’s life and the lives of those close to them. Today, with a focus on patient-centered care, safe transitions of care, and strategies to educate and empower patients to be engaged in their care, professionals at the point of care are beginning to understand how to better prepare patients and their families to face the challenges of living with a chronic disease and providing the tools that allow them to reach their maximum potential and live a quality life.

Patient Empowerment: The New Mix of Patient Teaching and Healthcare Coaching

Innovative Models Achieve Sustained Success

How can healthcare professionals improve their skills to more effectively educate and empower patients? The answer lies in new and innovative models of patient interaction. Today there are emerging creative and innovative educational techniques that healthcare professionals can incorporate into their practice to help them improve their skills and be more effective in interfacing with patients – and witness improved outcomes. Empowering and engaging patients to take an active role in their health and healthcare is a goal of physicians, pharmacists, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, case/care managers, social workers, behavioral healthcare professionals, and others who care for patients across the continuum of care.

Observation Status: Benchmarks and Best Practices

Secure Your Status and Maximize Reimbursements

For what seems like a simple designation, observation status is proving to be a complicated and potentially costly aspect of Medicare admissions. Recently, one hospital on the west coast was forced to recompense the federal government to the tune of $2.2 million because of an observation vs. inpatient discrepancy. With inpatient admissions criteria more stringent than ever, hospitals must fully understand the opportunities available when applying designations to patients. Implementing best practices in billing, coding, medical necessity and pre-access plans will make sure hospitals are maximizing reimbursement—and covering their history in a safe way to ward against RAC audits.

Join the Case In Point Webinar series as a faculty of frontline practitioners—including a medical director and case management leaders—share their benchmarks and best practices in the vital area of observation status.

Managing Chronic Pain:

How a Team-Based Effort Creates Productivity Gains and Healthier Outcomes

According to the American Osteopathic Association more than 76 million Americans are affected each year by chronic pain—more than cancer, diabetes and heart disease rates combined. The National Institutes of Health estimates that the economic cost of pain exceeds $100 billion per year in the U.S., including healthcare utilization costs and lost workforce productivity.

Join a leading faculty to learn about the advances being made in the treatment of chronic pain—including expert advice on returning workers to health, vocational rehabilitation programs, and the management of chronic pain from a psychosocial perspective—and the vital role the care coordination team in improving functioning and quality of life patients and families.

Leadership and Career Advancement:

Key Competencies for Today's Case Manager

Case managers are at the center of care delivery for patients across the continuum. They serve as coordinators of care, educators, motivators, and are a critical link for the patient and families as well as physicians, pharmacists, clinical nurses, and other members of the care coordination team.

But what happens when case managers want to elevate their core competencies to take advantage of leadership positions and steady career advancement—which benefits the individual practitioner as well as the organization or practice as a whole? In today’s changing healthcare landscape, the roles and competencies of case managers are shifting. Learn from a team of experts what you need to know to capitalize in this exciting time of change.

Limiting Fraud and Abuse:

Creating Better Cultures in Care Coordination

Healthcare fraud, abuse and waste is a national problem that can be found in every sector of the healthcare system. Fraud and abuse are not the only causes of wasteful spending, but they are major contributors. According to estimates from National Health Care Anti-Fraud Association (NHCAA), as much as 10% of all healthcare expenditures in the United States may be lost each year to fraud, abuse and waste. That is more than $100 billion annually—coming largely from healthcare providers and healthcare organizations attempting to defraud the system.
Health reform is strengthening the government’s capacity to fight fraud, waste and abuse in federal and state programs.

Unlocking Motivational Interviewing:

How Eliciting Behavior Change Can Enhance Health and Cut Costs

Motivational interviewing is a robust behavior-change technique that is rapidly emerging across many health care disciplines—for extremely good reason. Studies have shown the patient-centered technique to enhance patient outcomes, from improving health status, promoting physical activity, improving nutritional habits, and encouraging medication adherence to helping manage chronic conditions, including mental illness, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, obesity and diabetes (Butterworth, JMCP).

Reforming Readmissions:

Action Steps to Cut Costs and Enhance Quality

Hospital readmission rates not only hold the potential as an area of address for drastic cost-savings, but they serve as a key marker of quality care. Low readmission rates signal strong transitions, well-functioning discharge planning, exemplary follow-up care and, overall, a healthier, better-adjusted patient.

Health Literacy in Action:

Realizing Effective Health Communication

Choosing a healthy lifestyle, knowing how to seek medical care, and taking advantage of preventive measures all require that consumers understand and use health information correctly. Given the complexity of the health care system, it is not surprising that health literacy is associated with poor health, a diminished quality of life and rising health care costs.

New Views on End of Life:

Providing Care in a Changing Environment

While the delicate skill of a health care professional will always endure when treating patients at the end of life, the changing industry and newly defined protocols are reshaping the end of life experience—for both the patient and the provider. The advancements of hospice and palliative care, legal issues such as do not resuscitate, and an emerging ethical perspective on life-sustaining treatment are but a few of the ways the end of life experience is changing.

Join the publisher of Case In Point, Case In Point Weekly, and the Case Management Resource Guide for a 90-minute online training session on the emerging developments within the end of life realm.

Legal, Ethics and Patient Safety:

Creating a Culture of Caring

All health care professionals are bound by regulations—including legislative regulations, standards of practice guidelines, ethical principles, and those of their individual disciplines. Yet due to influences, from pressure to perform and lack of resources to mixed signals from organizational leaders, professionals many times deviate from laws and ethical standards. When this happens, systems weaken, staff morale plummets and costly lawsuits can occur.

The publisher of Case In Point invites you to join this 90-minute training session to assist you and your team in learning how to create a “culture of caring” within your organization. The expert faculty will share trends, issues and challenges they see in current practice. They will provide practical tips that you can implement into your organization and your private practice to ensure that care is ethically sound and legally defensible.

Health Care Reform:

What Does It Mean for You?

Capping a year of legislative activity and ending decades of frustration for millions of Americans, the House of Representatives approved a pair of bills that would extend health care coverage to more than 30 million Americans. The power is now in the hands of in-the-trench health care practitioners, and it is essential that we understand the immediate and long-term implications of the reform bill.

Case In Point presents this special webinar to allow you to begin the process of improving your practice to meet the challenges we face as consumers and health care professionals alike. Our esteemed faculty will address the issues and provide some practical recommendations that will assist you and your organization in improving on the intent of the health care reform legislation.

Here Come the RACs:

Install Steps Now To Improve Compliance (and Avoid Costly Audits)

As of January 1, 2010, the Recovery Audit Contractor Program, which seeks to correct errors in Medicare payments due to flawed billing, coding mistakes and medical necessity, is underway in all 50 states. Recently, RACs have begun to issue complex reviews, which require a hospital’s unveiling of medical records, in addition to the now-standard automated reviews that deal primarily with claims data.
Join the publisher of Case In Point, Case In Point Weekly and the Case Management Resource Guide for an online training session and learn what you and your organization can do to safeguard against RACs.

Patient Activation:

Optimize Outcomes Through Patient Engagement

More than any procedure, pharmaceutical or supplement, patients themselves harness the most power to create change in their own health and wellness. The secret is how to unlock that power — and in turn create the dynamic change that can increase adherence, boost well-being, and cut health care costs as a result of a healthier, more prevention-oriented patients.
A faculty of leading experts share their insight on the growing and exciting practice of patient activation. This 90-minute training session will focus on the tenets of patient activation, the best way to turn the theory into practice, and the important role that case managers, health coaches and other professionals play in activating the best, most mindful and healthiest portion that each and every one of our patients has to offer.

Bending the Health Care Spending Curve:

Strategies to Lower Employer Health Care Costs Today

How health care reform will affect employers, employees, providers and health plans is something that will play out closer to 2014. With practical reform measures some five years off, the question most employers are asking today is — “What am I going to do next quarter to lower my escalating health care costs and improve the health of my employees to ensure they are productive and fit for duty?”
This 90-minute training session brings together leading experts who have produced impressive outcomes in lowering health care costs while improving the health and wellness of their workforce.