Measuring community-based case management performance: strategies for evaluation

Case management services are not implemented uniformly or with the same levels of intensity. Case managers serve in diverse settings, have varied training and experiences, and individualize care at the patient level. The flexible characteristics of case management services pose challenges to, and accentuate the need for, successful ongoing evaluation. The purpose of this article is to describe a multimodal evaluation planning strategy that was applied to case management services delivered to pediatric Medicaid recipients within an enhanced primary care case management delivery system. The evaluation planning steps included describing the organization and case management program, identifying barriers to evaluation, outlining evaluation questions, specifying data needs, identifying sources of data, and selecting evaluation methods. The evaluation plan utilized a combination of case studies, monitoring, surveys, and trend analysis. The approaches outlined in this article are likely to be applicable to evaluating diverse case management programs and services.