6/04/2019

Care Manager Efficiency, Part 1: Curating and Organizing Content

Christy Calhoun, MPH, Chief Content Officer

In this three-part series, Christy Calhoun shares ways care managers can use health education to involve members in their care, work more productively, and lower costs of care.

Know that frantic feeling of being overwhelmed when you’re short on time and can’t find what you want? When your health education is organized in a way that’s already put together and ready to share with members, your care managers can work more productively. Here are four ways to set care managers up to successfully engage with patients through health education.

1. Curate content into collections
   When you want to work efficiently, it helps to put things you use frequently right where you need them. Curate health education topics into easy-to-use collections. These collections make it easy for care managers to find the right education when they’re working with members.
   
   Does it make sense to organize your education by specific plans of care? Or do you follow a protocol for managing people with certain conditions, like diabetes? Based on your parameters, you can organize your content to help care managers support someone trying to lower their A1c level more independently.
2. Dig deeper for complementary collections
   When organizations come up with ways to group their health education content, they see significant increases in utilization. Consider how you might enhance a content collection about diabetes by including suites of content to cover topics like nutrition, exercise, depression, and mindfulness. Organize your collections so that complementary information is easy for care managers to deliver to the people who need it.
   
   One way to start building collections is to look at your most frequently used content and consider selecting it to use in your curated collections. Another way is to determine which content care managers use most frequently to be sure it aligns with the goals you have for your staff and members.
3. Extend your care manager’s touch
   Prioritizing relationships between members and coaches adds value and keeps members engaged in their health. A single encounter can lead to follow-up education that’s delivered over time and personalized to what a person needs.
   
   Let’s say that, as a care manager, you just had a phone conversation with a member about helping them manage their blood sugar. There may be a lot of educational resources you could send them, but you don’t want to overwhelm them with too much, too fast. Instead, use tools to schedule multiple deliveries from one screen. That education can be sent on specific dates between encounters to align with educational goals. Care managers save time and improve their efficiency because it increases the number of personal touch points without adding call and staff time.
4. Consider language that supports your audience
   You can reach members most effectively by sending health education in their primary language.
   
   For example, curating and grouping content for a Spanish-speaking population can make delivery easier for coaches who don’t speak Spanish to choose content for that audience. Members may engage more deeply in their health and are more likely to achieve their goals, like keeping blood sugar in the target range or managing their health after hospitalization to avoid readmissions, when they're educated in their preferred language.

Want to know more about how health education can enhance your care management program and help keep your care managers efficient and productive? Check out the Healthwise Solution for Care Management.

Curating the right content and organizing it in a way that makes sense for your organization is just the first step toward improving care manager efficiency. Read part two of our series: “Leveraging Your Data.”