Planning Care in the Clinical, Operational, and Financial Worlds

This casebook emphasizes cooperation between medical and mental health clinicians on behalf of persons who seek care in either medical or mental health settings. But this casebook also features another form of collaboration: the “cooperation” of clinical, operational, and financial perspectives and requirements as cases unfold with real people in real settings.The reason for writing case studies in a way that features this latter form of “collaboration” is simple: Great clinical care takes place in healthcare organizations (from small to large) which require not only good clinical methods but also good operational capacities and sufficient financial viability. While taking a 20,000-ft view, a “law of nature” becomes apparent:

• 1. If care is clinically inappropriate it fails.

• 2. If care is not operationalized properly, it also fails

• 3. If care does not make reasonable use of resources, the organization, its patients, or society eventually go bankrupt and thousands of patient-clinician relationships are disrupted.