Case management "within the walls": a glimpse into the future

Case management integrates patient and provider satisfaction, takes into consideration cost factors, and provides a means of managing the individual's health concerns. It offers nurses an opportunity to demonstrate their roles in multidisciplinary healthcare teams. Using the case management approach, nurse case managers can optimize client self-care, decrease fragmentation of care, provide quality care across a continuum, enhance patients' quality of life, decrease length of hospitalization, increase patient and staff satisfaction, and promote the cost-effective use of scarce resources. This article will review case management, acute care case management, the essential characteristics and job responsibilities of the nurse case manager, and the stages of nursing case management. This article presents the nurse case manager's involvement with a patient in the critical care unit who sustained an aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage. A glimpse into the future will be viewed.