Case Management in the Delivery of Nursing Care

The nursing case management model, established on the foundation of primary nursing, provides two pathways for delivering patient care. The primary nurse pathway can be used for patients with less complex health problems and is unit based case management. The nurse case manager pathway will be employed for patients with complex health problems who need advanced nursing care and can be expected to use many resources within an institution. A nurse case manager will be assigned at admission and will, through collaboration with the patient, family, physician, nurses, and other health professionals, develop a comprehensive plan of care that will direct the use of resources until health equilibrium is achieved. Because the nurse case manager is not restricted by unit boundaries, patient care is coordinated and directed by a single nurse. Timelines, developed by the Center for Nursing Case Management, can be used to detail expected outcomes at critical points as the patient moves along the health care continuum, and thus provide a basis for evaluating the effectiveness of interventions