In the age when a more efficient healthcare system is next to a battle that desperately needs a win, care coordination evolved as a frontrunner among tools that are going to shape-up patient care while helping to limit healthcare costs.
Theoretically, “Care coordination in the primary care practice involves deliberately organizing patient care activities and sharing information among all of the participants concerned with a patient’s care to achieve safer and more effective care. This means that the patient’s needs and preferences are known and communicated at the right time to the right people, and that this information is used to guide the delivery of safe, appropriate and effective care.”
In other words, the core objective is to have a healthcare system that works without any hitches and glitches. Thus, care coordination is an approach widely embraced by nurses and other patient care professionals that significantly shrink the gaps between different branches of a healthcare system, such as emergency units, urgent care clinics and specialty services. Thereby providing quality care and satisfaction to the patient and channelizing efficiencies of professionals for the benefit of a healthcare organization.
Apart from this, care coordination entails a lot, such as-
- Care coordination involves training healthcare staff to coordinate recommendations and transitions of care based upon the diagnostic assessment of patient’s clinical, insurance and logistical needs.
- To be a part of this nursing profession, a postgraduate degree in MSN in care coordination equips a nurse with the right set of skills and knowledge to perform this complex role of care coordination provider.
- It also means that care coordination implicates developing and executing a system to help specialists understand patient recommendations, have access to all the information they need.
- Subsequent interaction with patients after the first visit or discharge from hospital to communicate the situation and treatment results to the patients and their families is also a part of care coordination in nursing profession.
- Following up with the patients when they seek healthcare services outside of primary care.
There is no rocket science here. It is all about internal and external communication among different units, specialty services, between physicians, nurse practitioners as well as the patients.
