Care Management and Wound Care: The Expanding Role of the Care Manager in the New Millennium and Opportunities for Collaboration and Innovation

The care manager (CM) has the unique ability to engage the force that will promote a collaborative health care team approach to the home care patient customer (PC). Broader collaboration between various business partners and health care providers is needed. This collaboration ensures that real or imagined care barriers are resolved timely and safely. By uniting a model of collaboration with innovation, an optimal level of health may be achieved for PCs. The primary diagnosis dictates only a portion of PC care. Unaddressed or inadequately addressed comorbidities and environmental or psychosocial factors negatively affect home care outcomes-for example, chronic wounds that do not heal or worsen under care when wound healing is the goal. By assuming the global-holistic view of the PC and/or family's needs, the CM will be the link to other health team members to identify any resource or service to operate at a best practice level.