[The telephone follow-up by a nurse case manager in major surgery. A prospective observational study]. / Il follow-up infermieristico telefonico nell'ambito del case management in chirurgia maggiore. Uno studio osservazionale prospettico.

. The telephone follow-up by a nurse case manager in major surgery. A prospective observational study. INTRODUCTION: One of the methods used in case management is a structured telephone follow-up, helpful in improving patient satisfaction, supporting autonomy, and addressing information needs post-discharge. OBJECTIVE: To describe the experience of nursing case management and post-hospital telephone follow-up in patients undergoing major abdominal surgery. METHOD: Single-centre prospective observational study. All consecutive patients undergoing major abdominal surgery from April 2021 to May 2022 were included. Symptoms and nursing care needs during the post-discharge period, along with case management interventions, were described. RESULTS: Of the 205 patients included in the study, 89.8% underwent elective surgery and 135 (65.9%) did not develop postoperative complications, with a median hospital stay of 8 days. 182 (88.8%) patients reported at least one postoperative symptom, with fatigue, altered bowel movements, pain, and lack of appetite being the most common. Interventions provided by the case manager decreased progressively over time, from 149 at the first telephone contact (72%) to 44 at the third (25%). A total of 22 patients (10.7%) were readmitted to the hospital, 12 of whom on the recommendation of the case manager. CONCLUSIONS: After discharge, patients experience numerous issues: although the symptoms encountered are common during the post-operative period, they often require support beyond the patient's capacity. The intervention of the case manager with information and support for self-management of symptoms enabled the early identification of risk situations.

Changes in long-term care insurance revenue among service providers during the COVID-19 pandemic.

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted peoples' health-related behaviors, especially those of older adults, who have restricted their activities in order to avoid contact with others. Moreover, the pandemic has caused concerns in long-term care insurance (LTCI) providers regarding management and financial issues. This study aimed to examine the changes in revenues among LTCI service providers in Japan during the pandemic and analyze its impact on different types of services. METHODS: In this study, we used anonymized data from "Kaipoke," a management support platform for older adult care operators provided by SMS Co., Ltd. Kaipoke provides management support services to more than 27,400 care service offices nationwide and has been introduced in many home-care support offices. The data used in this study were extracted from care plans created by care managers on the Kaipoke platform. To examine the impact of the pandemic, an interrupted time-series analysis was conducted in which the date of the beginning of the pandemic was set as the prior independent variable. RESULTS: The participating providers were care management providers (n = 5,767), home-visit care providers (n = 3,506), home-visit nursing providers (n = 971), and adult day care providers (n = 4,650). The results revealed that LTCI revenues decreased significantly for care management providers, home-visit nursing providers, and adult day care providers after the COVID-19 pandemic began. The largest decrease was an average base of USD - 1668.8 in adult day care. CONCLUSION: The decrease in revenue among adult day care providers was particularly concerning in terms of the sustainability of their business. This decrease in revenue may have made it difficult to retain personnel, and staff may have needed to be laid off as a result. Although this study has limitations, it may provide useful suggestions for countermeasures in such scenarios, in addition to support conducted measures.

Tensions experienced by case managers working in home care for older adults in Quebec: first level analysis of an institutional ethnography.

BACKGROUND: Case managers play a vital role in integrating the necessary services to optimise health-related goals and outcomes. Studies suggest that in home care, case managers encounter tensions in their day-to-day work, that is, disjuncture between what they should do, in theory, and what they actually do, in practice. However, direct exploration of these tensions is lacking. As such, this study aimed to describe the tensions encountered by case managers in public home care for older adults in Quebec and their influence on day-to-day work. METHODS: An institutional ethnography was conducted through observations of work, interviews and a survey with case managers working in home care in Quebec. Data were analysed using institutional ethnography first-level analysis procedures. This included mapping the work sequences as well as identifying the tensions experienced by case managers through the words they used. RESULTS: Three main tensions were identified. First, case managers perceive that, despite working to return hospitalised older adults at home safely, their work also aims to help free up hospital beds. Thus, they often find themselves needing to respond quickly to hospital-related inquiries or expedite requests for home care services. Second, they are supposed to delegate the care to "partners" (e.g., private organisations). However, they feel that they are in effect managing the quality of the services provided by the "partners." Consequently, they go to great lengths to ensure that good care will be provided. Finally, they must choose between meeting organisational requirements (e.g., reporting statistics about the work, documenting information in the older adults' file, doing mandatory assessments) and spending time providing direct care. This often leads to prioritising direct care provision over administrative tasks, resulting in minimal reporting of essential information. CONCLUSION: The results are discussed using the three lenses of professional practice context analyses (i.e., accountability, ethics, and professional-as-worker) to formulate recommendations for practice and research. They suggest that, despite their important role, case managers have limited power in home care (e.g., with partners, with the hospital).

Novice Chinese Bariatric Nurses' Perceptions of Their Role as Bariatric Case Managers: A Qualitative Study.

INTRODUCTION: Bariatric case managers (BCM) are integral healthcare team members for patients undergoing bariatric surgery in China. As the demand for bariatric surgery increases in China, the number of BCMs has also risen. However, more is needed to know about the perceptions of novice bariatric nurses toward their role as case managers. This study aims to investigate the perceptions of novice Chinese bariatric nurses toward their roles during the early stages of their careers. METHODS: This qualitative study employed semi-structured individual interviews with 15 novice bariatric nurses who received training as BCMs. The interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed line-by-line, and analyzed thematically. The study was conducted in a bariatric surgery center of a public tertiary hospital in Southern China. RESULTS: Three themes emerged from the data related to the perceptions of being a BCM: "negotiating the ambiguity of the BCM role," "establishing a core set of behaviors for the BCM role," and "identifying areas of competence to develop a BCM role framework." The novice bariatric nurses expressed both positive and negative feelings toward their role. They highlighted the need for further training to improve their qualifications and the importance of support from colleagues, and hospital management. CONCLUSIONS: The findings illuminate the role of the BCM in China. Future research should investigate effective and acceptable job descriptions and cooperation modes between BCMs, colleagues and hospital management. We recommend using these findings to develop training programs for novice BCMs and improve their capacity to provide quality care to patients undergoing bariatric surgery.

The Effectiveness of the Case Manager-Centered Collaborative Care Model with Computer-Assisted Assessment on Quality Indicators for the Care of Dementia.

INTRODUCTION: This study aimed to investigate the influence of case management and its corresponding computer-assisted assessment system on the quality improvement of dementia care. METHODS: This observational study enrolled 2029 patients and their caregivers at Changhua Christian Hospital in Taiwan. Physicians who made the diagnosis of dementia would introduce the patient and caregiver dyad to the case manager-centered collaborative care team after obtaining agreement. The achievement rates of 11 quality indicators (QIs) comprising timely diagnostic evaluations, regular screens of cognition and neuropsychiatric symptoms, caregiver support, and proper medication prescriptions were counted. Different timeframes (≤4 months, 4 months-1 year, 1-2 years, 2-3 years, or ≥3 years) from diagnosis of dementia to collaborative care intervention were compared. RESULTS: A significantly higher attainment rate was achieved for patients with earlier entry into the collaborative team model, including QIs about timely diagnosis and regular screening, and caregiver support. The QIs regarding dementia medication prescriptions and documentation of the risk of antipsychotics remained similar regardless of the time of entry into the model. The completion rates of QIs also improved after the information system was launched. CONCLUSIONS: Physician-case manager co-management in the setting of a collaborative care model with a computer-assisted assessment system helps improve QI achievement for dementia care.

Impact of training and case manager support for traditional birth attendants in the linkage of care among HIV-positive pregnant women in Southwest Nigeria: a 3-arm cluster randomized control trial.

BACKGROUND: Mother-to-child transmission (MTCT) accounts for 90% of all new paediatric HIV infections in Nigeria and for approximately 30% of the global burden. This study aimed to determine the effectiveness of a training model that incorporated case managers working closely with traditional birth attendants (TBAs) to ensure linkage to care for HIV-positive pregnant women. METHODS: This study was a 3-arm parallel design cluster randomized controlled trial in Ifo and Ado-Odo Ota, Ogun State, Nigeria. The study employed a random sampling technique to allocate three distinct TBA associations as clusters. Cluster 1 received training exclusively; Cluster 2 underwent training in addition to the utilization of case managers, and Cluster 3 served as a control group. In total, 240 TBAs were enrolled in the study, with 80 participants in each of the intervention and control groups. and were followed up for a duration of 6 months. We employed a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) statistical test to evaluate the differences between baseline and endline HIV knowledge scores and PMTCT practices. Additionally, bivariate analysis using the chi-square test was used to investigate linkage to care. Furthermore, logistic regression analysis was utilized to identify TBA characteristics associated with various PMTCT interventions, including the receipt of HIV test results and repeat testing at term for HIV-negative pregnant women. The data analysis was performed using Stata version 16.1.877, and we considered results statistically significant when p values were less than 0.05. RESULTS: At the end of this study, there were improvements in the TBAs' HIV and PMTCT-related knowledge within the intervention groups, however, it did not reach statistical significance (p > 0.05). The referral of pregnant clients for HIV testing was highest (93.5%) within cluster 2 TBAs, who received both PMTCT training and case manager support (p ≤ 0.001). The likelihood of HIV-negative pregnant women at term repeating an HIV test was approximately 4.1 times higher when referred by TBAs in cluster 1 (AOR = 4.14; 95% CI [2.82-5.99]) compared to those in the control group and 1.9 times in cluster 2 (AOR = 1.93; 95% CI [1.3-2.89]) compared to the control group. Additionally, older TBAs (OR = 1.62; 95% CI [1.26-2.1]) and TBAs with more years of experience in their practice (OR = 1.45; 95% CI [1.09-1.93]) were more likely to encourage retesting among HIV-negative women at term. CONCLUSIONS: The combination of case managers and PMTCT training was more effective than training alone for TBAs in facilitating the linkage to care of HIV-positive pregnant women, although this effect did not reach statistical significance. Larger-scale studies to further investigate the benefits of case manager support in facilitating the linkage to care for PMTCT of HIV are recommended. TRIAL REGISTRATION: The study was retrospectively registered in the Pan African Clinical Trial Registry, and it was assigned the unique identification number PACTR202206622552114.

Telemedicine Could Reduce the Role of Family Physicians to Case Managers.

The COVID-19 pandemic led to the widespread and continuing use of telemedicine in primary care. Despite telemedicine's benefits, it threatens to reduce the role of family physician to that of gatekeeper and case manager, nullifying decades of experience and medical intuition that is more difficult to develop and apply virtually. Additionally, many values of family medicine have eroded during this global process. The narrative presents 3 vignettes that illustrate different ways in which we contend with this complex issue. The challenges presented by telemedicine require us to re-examine our professional and personal values such as maintaining the centrality of the therapeutic relationship with patients. The greatest concern, however, relates to the future of the profession and the ability of new family doctors to overcome the challenges of telemedicine in an increasingly digital world.

Dilemmas and support strategies in dementia care: Experiences of case managers in Taiwan.

Objective: This study aimed to examine the dilemmas encountered and the countermeasures adopted by case managers, who care for individuals with dementia. The study also aimed to identify the types of support and assistance case managers require.Methods: In this qualitative study, the researchers conducted semi-structured interviews with 10 case managers, six from integrated dementia care centers and four from community-based dementia care centers in Taiwan.Results: The results are as follows: (1) Case managers providing services for individuals with dementia primarily encountered two major dilemmas, including cognitive differences (such as a lack of understanding of dementia, differences in ideas about dementia care, and distrust of the professionalism of case managers) with family members and their own insufficient professional capabilities, which made it difficult to reach a consensus on caregiving with family members and address the diverse conditions of individuals with dementia. (2) In response to these dilemmas, case managers adopted various approaches to enhance families' understanding of dementia and facilitate reaching a consensus on care. They also improved their professional capabilities through team discussions and resource networking. (3) The support and assistance required by case managers are continuous learning, the enhancement of their professional competencies, organizational support, and workload management.Conclusion: The findings of this study contribute to an understanding of the dilemmas faced by case managers in Taiwan's centers for integrated dementia care and community-based dementia care centers during policies implementation, as well as the strategies they adopted and the assistance they required. These results can also offer recommendations for policies, professional training, dementia services, and resources to reduce the disparity between policy and practice.

[Experiences of Transitional Care for Medicaid Case Managers].

PURPOSE: This phenomenological study tried to understand the essence of the transitional care experience of medicaid case managers and its structural meaning. In addition, it was attempted to establish a system of transitional care and seek support measures for medicaid case managers. METHODS: The participants of this study were 7 medicaid case managers who had spent more than 1 year and 6 months in medicaid pilot project. Data were collected with individual in-depth interviews from June to December 2021. The data were analyzed by Giorgi's phenomenological analysis method. RESULTS: The seven constituents derived from the results of this study were 'struggle to establish a living environment', 'dedication to supporting independent living', 'anxiety about safety', 'pressure on care responsibilities', 'distress in building the pilot project', 'pride in role', and 'expectation for improvement'. CONCLUSION: The study results provide a comprehensive understanding of the transition care reality for medicaid case managers. They also shed light on managers' perceptions and attitudes. These findings can serve as fundamental information for establishing support measures for medicaid case managers and transitional care systems.

Effectiveness of Case Manager Led Multi-Disciplinary Team Approach on Glycemic Control Amongst T2DM Patients in Primary Care in Riyadh: A Retrospective Follow-Up Study.

OBJECTIVES: Our study aims to assess the effectiveness of implementing a case manager-led Multidisciplinary Team approach in the primary healthcare setting on improving glycemic control and reducing cardiovascular risks for T2DM patients over a 6-month period. METHODS: This retrospective record-based follow-up study was carried out on 3060 uncontrolled T2DM patients in primary healthcare centers in Riyadh First Health Cluster over a period of 6 months. The patient records are investigated and analyzed, including demographic characteristics and measurements of Hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c), Low-Density Lipoprotein Cholesterol (LDL-C), total cholesterol, and BP levels at enrollment and after 6 months of Multi-Disciplinary Team follow-up. The changes in the study variables and their correlations to each other are tested using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences software. RESULTS: At enrollment, our patients were characterized by poor glycemic control (HbAIC > 8%). Most of them have high body weight with a mean BMI of (31.2 ± 1.7), and nearly two-thirds are either hypertensive or have dyslipidemia (43.4% and 47.3% respectively). After 6 months of MDT follow-up, there is a significant improvement in glycemic control among 1971 patients (64.4%), with a reduction in the mean level of different outcomes relative to baseline HbA1c (-15%, P < .001), total cholesterol (-9.0%, P < .001), LDL-C (-11.0%, P < .001), systolic BP (-7.7%, P < .001), and diastolic BP (-10.5%, P < .001). The improved glycemic control showed a significant positive correlation with the number of MDT visits but negatively correlated with BMI and the number of comorbidities. In addition, the improvements in secondary outcomes were positively and significantly correlated with such improvements in glycemic control. CONCLUSION: Case-manager-led MDT approach significantly improves glycemic control and significantly improves control over dyslipidemia and hypertension, reducing cardiovascular risks, and unfavorable events among such diabetic patients. We highly recommend developing more MDTs, training case managers, and rigorously evaluating the MDT approach.

Implementation of a Modified Early Screening for Discharge Tool to Optimize Case Manager Efficiency and Impact Length of Stay.

PURPOSE OF STUDY: The postacute landscape has been challenged since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic by staffing shortages and a decline in postacute bed availability. As a result, patients in acute care hospitals are experiencing longer lengths of stay (LOS) and case managers (CMs) are managing increasingly complex discharge plans. This project involved the design and implementation of a modified Early Screen for Discharge Planning (ESDP) tool to support prioritizing patients with complex discharge needs, with the primary outcome of decreasing LOS. PRIMARY PRACTICE SETTING: The project took place in a community teaching hospital, part of a large academic health system in the Northeast, United States. METHODOLOGY AND PARTICIPANTS: The project was designed as a prospective controlled study (between September 1 and November 30, 2021) with defined intervention and control cohorts, involving a modified ESDP electronic health record-based score including self-rated walking limitation, age, prior living status, and mobility level of assist. A modified ESDP score of 10 and greater indicated that patients would benefit from ongoing CM support, whereas those with an ESDP score of less than 10 were unlikely to have discharge planning needs. Participants were adult patients on medical and surgical inpatient units. RESULTS: The project included 718 patients, 376 and 342 in the intervention and control cohorts, respectively. The modified ESDP performed comparably with the standard ESDP (14% discrepancy, with all patients appropriately identified for CM services). Implementation of the modified ESDP led to 53.5% of patients screening out of CM services, thereby increasing the time CMs were able to spend on complex discharge planning and was associated with a trend in LOS reduction (0.55 days). IMPLICATIONS FOR CASE MANAGEMENT PRACTICE: The findings of this project demonstrate that implementation of a modified ESDP can improve CM efficiency and improve hospital throughput. Given the unprecedented capacity challenges in both the acute and postacute settings, there is a need to implement CM workflow strategies that will optimize the effectiveness of critical resources, while ensuring that patients' complex discharge needs are met.

Implementation of dementia care management in routine care (RoutineDeCM): a study protocol for process evaluation.

INTRODUCTION: Dementia care management is a complex intervention intended to support persons with dementia and their (caring) relatives in home-based care arrangements. Dementia care management was developed in the federal state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania in Germany and subsequently adapted for the German region of Siegen-Wittgenstein, where it will now be implemented. Four different service providers will carry out the implementation process. This study protocol describes the planned procedures for the parallel evaluation of the implementation process. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: A multiple embedded case study design was chosen for the planned process evaluation. Data collection and analysis will be informed by the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research, the Expert Recommendations for Implementing Change, the Medical Research Council framework for conducting process evaluations of complex interventions and the Taxonomy of Outcomes for Implementation Research. Information (qualitative and quantitative) will be collected from all stakeholders involved in the dementia care management intervention (ie, dementia care managers, general practitioners, people with dementia). ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: The process evaluation is conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki, the recommendations on good scientific practice, the research ethics principles of the Code of Ethics of the German Society of Nursing Science, and on the basis of ethical approval from the Clinical Ethics Committee of University Medicine Greifswald (BB 110/22). The results of the process evaluation will be disseminated through reports to the funders of the study and also as a summary of recommendations for the sustainable implementation of dementia care management for future implementers. We also plan to publish the results of this process evaluation in an international peer-reviewed journal. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: NCT05529277, Registered 7 September 2022, https://beta. CLINICALTRIALS: gov/study/NCT05529277.

A Tiny Historical Slice of Case Management.

National Case Management Week in 2023 is October 8-14. This celebration of case managers has been going on since 1999 after the Individual Case Management Association (ICMA) and the Case Management Society of America (CMSA) merged. Since the 1990s, case management has evolved significantly; this evolution impacts every case manager, on every case by case, year by year.

Screening for Social Determinants of Health in Transitional Care Patients and Partnering With the Faith Community to Address Food Insecurity.

PURPOSE/OBJECTIVES: The purposes of this project were to collect and document social determinants of health (SDOH) data, and to partner with the faith community to address identified food insecurity. PRIMARY PRACTICE SETTING: The setting for this project was an ambulatory care clinic in Guilford County, North Carolina. The clinic offers care to patients discharged from a regional medical center who have no insurance and/or primary care providers. FINDINGS/CONCLUSIONS: Clinic staff successfully developed and implemented a screening tool for entering SDOH data into the electronic health record (EHR) charts of clinic patients. Results demonstrated that 52% of clinic patients reported food insecurity. The clinic collaborated with the faith community to provide donated food bags to patients in need. IMPLICATIONS FOR CASE MANAGEMENT PRACTICE: SDOH data were largely absent from the EHR before the clinic case manager started this project. Results of the screening tool demonstrated higher rates of food insecurity than expected. The case manager worked with the faith community to address immediate needs of food insecurity. The case manager plans to share SDOH information with the wider community to affect positive change and to encourage other clinics and departments to start collecting SDOH data.

"Crack on": a qualitative study of care home managers experiences and responses to system-led setbacks during the crisis of the COVID-19 Pandemic in England.

OBJECTIVES: To explore care home managers' experiences of systems working with various organisations, including statutory, third sector and private, during the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic from Sept 2020 to April 2021 DESIGN: An exploratory qualitative interview study using a systems theory approach focussing on the intersections of relationship interdependencies with other organisations. SETTING: Conducted remotely with care home managers and key advisors who had worked since the start of the pandemic in/with care homes for older people across the East Midlands, UK. PARTICIPANTS: 8 care home managers and 2 end-of-life advisors who participated during the second wave of the pandemic from Sept 2020. A total of 18 care home managers participated in the wider study from April 2020 to April 2021 RESULTS: Four organisational relationship interdependencies were identified: care practices, resources governance and wise working. Managers identified changes in their care practices as a shift towards the normalisation of care, with an emphasis on navigating pandemic restrictions to fit the context. Resources such as staffing, clinical reviews, pharmaceutical and equipment supplies were challenged, leading to a sense of precarity and tension. National polices and local guidance were fragmented, complex and disconnected from the reality of managing a care home. As a response a highly pragmatic reflexive style of management was identified which encompassed the use of mastery to navigate and in some cases circumvent official systems and mandates. Managers' experience of persistent and multiple setbacks were viewed as negative and confirmed their views that care homes as a sector ere marginalised by policy makers and statutory bodies. CONCLUSIONS: Interactions with various organisations shaped the ways in which care home managers responded to and sought to maximise residents and staff well-being. Some relationships dissolved over time, such as when local business and schools returned to normal obligations. Other newly formed relationships became more robust including those with other care home managers, families, and hospices. Significantly, most managers viewed their relationship with local authority and national statutory bodies as detrimental to effective working, leading to a sense of increased mistrust and ambiguity. Respect, recognition and meaningful collaboration with the care home sector should underpin any future attempts to introduce practice change in the sector.

The Case Manager: An Agent Controlling the Activation of Knowledge Sources in a FHIR-Based Distributed Reasoning Environment.

BACKGROUND: Within the CAPABLE project the authors developed a multi-agent system that relies on a distributed architecture. The system provides cancer patients with coaching advice and supports their clinicians with suitable decisions based on clinical guidelines. OBJECTIVES: As in many multi-agent systems we needed to coordinate the activities of all agents involved. Moreover, since the agents share a common blackboard where all patients' data are stored, we also needed to implement a mechanism for the prompt notification of each agent upon addition of new information potentially triggering its activation. METHODS: The communication needs have been investigated and modeled using the HL7-FHIR (Health Level 7-Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) standard to ensure proper semantic interoperability among agents. Then a syntax rooted in the FHIR search framework has been defined for representing the conditions to be monitored on the system blackboard for activating each agent. RESULTS: The Case Manager (CM) has been implemented as a dedicated component playing the role of an orchestrator directing the behavior of all agents involved. Agents dynamically inform the CM about the conditions to be monitored on the blackboard, using the syntax we developed. The CM then notifies each agent whenever any condition of interest occurs. The functionalities of the CM and other actors have been validated using simulated scenarios mimicking the ones that will be faced during pilot studies and in production. CONCLUSION: The CM proved to be a key facilitator for properly achieving the required behavior of our multi-agent system. The proposed architecture may also be leveraged in many clinical contexts for integrating separate legacy services, turning them into a consistent telemedicine framework and enabling application reusability.

Establishment of Nurse Case Manager Role in a Pediatric Orthopedic Team.

PURPOSE/OBJECTIVES: Incorporating a nurse case manager (NCM) directly into a pediatric orthopedic department was implemented to address gaps in processes that had previously led to common delays in discharge planning. The orthopedic NCM works within an interdisciplinary team and provides guidance and support for both elective and emergent pediatric admissions. Applying continuous improvement techniques, the NCM role included the review of existing processes and determination of root causes of delays. This article describes some of the unique challenges and new processes included in the NCM role in the pediatric orthopedic setting, several solutions created and implemented to address identified delays, and statistical results of anticipatory discharge planning. PRIMARY PRACTICE SETTING: An NCM role was initiated in the orthopedic department at a quaternary-level freestanding pediatric hospital. FINDINGS/CONCLUSIONS: After interdisciplinary planning and implementation, the NCM role was established within the orthopedic department to facilitate timely, efficient, safe, and sustained discharges of patients. Success was realized through decreased denials and decreased number of avoidable inpatient days. Once rapport was established and streamlined work was developed, a retrospective review of length of stay was conducted to compare time periods prior to and after embedding this position. Changes in discharge planning processes positively affected the average length of stay for patients managed by the NCM. Cost savings are found in decreased avoidable inpatient days, decreased number of denials of inpatient medical necessity, and improved progression of care, which resulted in timely transitions and discharges. The effects of a consignment process and web-based ordering of durable medical equipment were also evaluated. Although this process in and of itself did not seem to impact length of stay, it did foster an improvement in team satisfaction around discharge readiness. IMPLICATIONS FOR CASE MANAGEMENT: Pediatric orthopedic service teams benefit from the role of the NCM when there is interdisciplinary involvement and a focus on streamlining processes from preadmission through transition of care. Further study in a concurrent design will shed light on other factors that impact length of stay, such as specific diagnoses and medical complexity. Average length of stay is an effective metric for services with a high percentage of elective admissions but may not be as dependable for teams that do not have prescribed lengths of stay. Study with a specific focus around those factors that impact both team and family satisfaction is also indicated.