Indirect and Direct Physician Support for Integrated Case Management in Adults

Abstract

ICM is intended to augment clinical treatment from a physician by assisting in health and life circumstances that interfere with patients’ ability to improve and stabilize their health. Treating physicians maintain a focus on clinical evaluation and treatment. Physicians working with patients having an ICM manager, however, have the advantage of quick access to information not typically included in standard medical assessments as well as intervention capabilities for circumstances that impede treatment outcomes. To the extent that the physician and ICM manager see themselves as a team for the patient, the physician will incorporate into their treatment plans an improved understanding of non-clinical factors affecting their patients’ health outcomes that have been uncovered through the ICM assessment process. For instance, knowing that a patient is not taking full doses of needed medications due to financial challenges allows a physician to consider cheaper generic alternatives or to seek medication cost support programs rather than simply increasing the dose of an expensive medication on the presumption that the current dose is insufficient to effect change. It is through enhanced information sharing that improved outcomes can be achieved.

To lead people, walk beside them… As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence. The next best, the people honor and praise. The next, the people fear; and the next, the people hate… When the best leaders work is done the people say, “We did it ourselves!”

—Lao-tsu