Creating clinical and economic "wins" through integrated case management: lessons for physicians and health system administrators.

Objective: This article describes an innovative integrated approach to case management using a standardized complexity assessment grid and communication tool, which is designed to identify barriers to improvement in 4 domains: biological, psychological, social, and health system; to create and implement holistic care plans based on "anchored barriers; and to document ongoing targeted outcomes.

Practice Settings: Adult and pediatric case and disease managers working for hospitals or clinics, health care delivery systems, general medical health plans, care management vendors, government agencies, and employers can effectively employ integrated case management procedures.

Integrated Case Management: Integrated case management augments traditional care coordination by allowing trained medical or mental health managers to assist with cross-disciplinary barriers without handoffs; to connect multidomain barriers to mutually agreed-upon care plan goals and activities; and to measure clinical, functional, fiscal, quality of life, and satisfaction outcomes as a part of the management process, especially in high-cost, complex patients.

Creating clinical and economic "wins" through integrated case management: lessons for physicians and health system administrators.

The 5% of patients using 50% of health resources commonly have interacting and persistent multimorbid illnesses; concurrent mental health problems; impaired social networks; and/or difficulties in accessing care through the health system. To improve outcomes in these patients, it is necessary to overcome clinical and nonclinical barriers that lead to poor health, treatment resistance, high health care cost, and disability. This article describes an innovative complexity-based and outcome-oriented approach using integrated case management.