The Case Management Process consists of several phases through which case managers provide care to their clients: Screening, Assessing, Stratifying Risk, Planning, implementing (Care Coordination), Following-Up, Transitioning (Transitional Care), Communicating Post Transition, and Evaluating. The overall process is iterative, nonlinear, and cyclical, its phases being revisited as necessary until the desired outcome is achieved. Given the very broad scope and depth of the process, case management is not simple, nor easy to carry out. Case workers often face many challenges in their work as they provide services to diverse groups of individuals with various needs and goals.
Case managers grapple with a multitude of challenges in their daily work, each one significant and demanding:
– All of these challenges make the job of case managers complicated, burdensome, and highly stressful. Not only can that impact the mental health of case managers but also the quality of their work, as overburdened employees may make mistakes and, sometimes, lose empathy towards clients. It is essential to find ways to ease the load on and simplify the work of case managers as far as possible. Some of the ways to assist case managers are discussed below:
Hack #1 Streamline Your Workflow
Your team is in a relentless, repetitive cycle: manually updating project statuses, sorting through work requests, and dealing with endless email threads—tasks that demand attention but add little to your organization’s strategic goals. This scenario is all too common in today’s enterprises, where manual tasks eat into valuable resources and sideline core objectives. That’s where automation comes in. Automating repetitive tasks can enhance productivity and redirect focus toward high-impact, strategic work.
Teams can identify repetitive tasks; those most frequently done should be automated.
Additionally, Using workflow diagrams to visualize and optimize your process can streamline it, allow you to merge more straightforward tasks, eliminate unnecessary data or personnel movement, and ultimately simplify the process to maximize efficiency.
Adopting work management platforms can liberate your teams to concentrate on more strategic, impactful work by automating repetitive tasks. When selecting the right platform, consider its compatibility with your existing tech stack and its scalability and user-friendliness. Incorporating such technology is not just a suggestion, but a necessity in lightening the workload for your case managers.
Hack #2: Master Your Calendar
Boosting productivity is all about allocating ample time to work without distraction on what is most crucial. For case managers, this skill is particularly vital to optimize their energy and resources. Follow these steps to master your calendar:
Hack #3: Tame Your Inbox
The average professional spends four hours daily sifting through and replying to emails.
Here’s how to manage that inbox better:
These might not sound like major steps, but in fact, boundaries help us prioritize our attention—to focus on the big stuff and find ways to automate or eliminate the rest.
Hack #4: Leverage Technology
– Explore case management software and tools. Case management helps organizations reach optimal results for clients. It’s the coordination of business services to resolve a case, usually for individual clients. The impact of technology has led companies to seek and apply mobility to their business processes. To keep up with changing trends, companies have employed the assistance of cloud-based case management software. Choose the right software for your organization and reap benefits like centralized data, remote access, fast intake, assessment, and case planning. Tools also allow rapid communication, collaboration between stakeholders, and referrals to third parties with user-friendly interfaces.
Hack #5: Prioritize Self-Care
As with any job, creating a healthy work-life balance is essential. Self-careSelf-care may look unproductive, but it is necessary to recover, rejuvenate, and prepare you for the next round of productive work. And so, prioritize your self-care in some of the following ways:
Hack #6: Collaborate with Your Team
Even the largest and most complex teams can work together effectively with the right conditions. Here are some ways to forge collaboration amongst your team:
Hack #7: Stay Organized
To save yourself and your team from overwhelm, create project dashboards to stay organized and track progress. A robust case management software like planStreet will allow you to do that in a few easy steps. Additionally, ensure document collection, tagging to specific clients, and storage is easy and quick. PlanStreet not only allows the digital collection of documents and digital signatures but also ensures complete privacy for documents shared and stored.
In light of the challenging circumstances case managers experience within their work routine, case managers are expected to feel rushed, short on time, overburdened, and overwhelmed. The stress of the situation will catch up to the workers, ultimately impacting their personal lives, physical and mental health, and the quality of work of case managers. Employing techniques that simplify tasks, organize tasks better, and save time can significantly reduce the stress and burden on case managers. Several hacks discussed above can be implemented by leveraging the technological tools available in today’s digital world. Case managers can use specialized case management software to optimize their work. Let’s look at PlanStreet’s powers that will make your life easier.
Streamlining your workflows by automating repetitive tasks and simplifying intake, document storage, and categorization will allow you to save time and be more organized so you don’t feel overwhelmed while managing several cases.
PlanStreet also centralizes all data and grants access to relevant team members, facilitating collaboration between teams and making it instant with cloud-based case management software that offers remote access from various devices.
PlanStreet is also HIPAA compliant, so case managers need not stress about navigating regulatory compliance. Additionally, PlanStreet ensures the confidentiality of client data, so case managers need not worry about privacy issues.
By minimizing the burden on case managers, PlanStreet allows them to prioritize time spent with clients and self-care.
Schedule an call with us to find out how PlanStreet can help your organization and case managers.