CRM or Case Management

A useful case management system must be scalable to account for the expansion of care throughout community and adapt to standards and changes:

At the base level this includes management of all demographic information, clinical information and financial information. In essence, a useful case management system should track everything a client does in your agency from the moment of intake through to discharge; it should calculate costs and track all activities and services related to the individual, should enable decision support systems and have assessments and documentation capabilities. For Big Brother and Privacy issues see those relevant sections.

There are a variety of elements that make up a case management system: referral and intake, assessment, treatment planning, authorization and service delivery documentation, scheduling, and reporting.

Other important elements include:

·services

· locations

· staff

· activities

· reporting

· interoperability

· distribution

The four primary elements of a case management system should be the following four attributes working in harmony: parties, activities, locations and materials. With those four underlying attributes cross referenced in a case management system any client event and issue can be accounted for.

Many organizations have used Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems as case management systems; but these applications fail to account for the clinical and service related issues of the organizations and consequently prove to be less than satisfactory. They were designed to track relationships and people, but not to perform decision support, assessments, manage privacy, and adapt to multiple service agencies with different functions. Many CRM vendors, in fact most, claim they have case management systems; but what they really have are CRM systems they are trying to manipulate into case management systems. Be wary of wolves in sheeps’ clothing.