MSKCC scripting improved the consistency of patient communication and staff efficiency.
To help ensure its patients receive consistent messages, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) has developed a series of scripts for use by its integrated case management team. Here, Laura Ostrowsky, RN, CCM, MUP, MSKCC director of case management, describes some scripting scenarios employed by the state-of-the-art specialty hospital.
There are a variety of ways we’ve done scripting. For example, there was a time when a case manager would meet with a doctor and the doctor would say, “I think we need to set up hospice for this patient.” The case manager then would go into the patient’s room and say, “I’m here to help you to set up your discharge plan. I know you’ll be going to hospice.”
And then the patient would say, “What are you talking about?”
One thing all case managers know is that when you go into a patient’s room, especially if someone told you they said something to the patient, you first must confirm what the patient understands about that previous conversation. If it turns out that they didn’t understand what you were told to talk about, then you don’t have that conversation. You go back to the staff member that sent you in there and discuss it. Perhaps you schedule a family meeting to discuss that issue.
We also developed scripts not only for preadmission staff, but for all staff trying to get approvals from insurers for high-cost medications and for procedures. We work with them to identify how to answer questions from the insurance company or insurance case manager so that those tasks can be handled by the doctor’s office or admitting department rather than by case management.
The approach of our length of stay reduction teams, while not exactly scripted, is concerned about consistency of message. The teams came up with the steps and planned the patient education material with the imperative that we never overestimate a length of stay, but rather err on the short side.
The imperative is that everybody speaks to the patient the same way. The case managers make a point to tell the team, “Don’t make promises we can’t keep.” That’s not exactly scripting, but it keeps everybody on the same page. For example, don’t tell a patient they are going to have plenty of help at home. Or that they will get home care and someone will be there every day, because you don’t know if that is going to happen.
Instead, you can say to the patient, “We are going to see if you are eligible for home care. I am going to send the case manager in to see you. They will check your benefits and go over eligibility. We will do our best to get you the services you need.”
Integrated Case Management: Elevating Quality and Clinical Metrics with Multidisciplinary Team-Based Care details the framework and implementation of the service-based multidisciplinary program MSKCC adopted to ensure that the care it provides to more than 25,000 admitted patients each year is both cost-effective and cost-efficient.
Tags: discharge planning, integrated case management, length of stay, oncology
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