“I'd like ideas about how to encourage my employer to pay for Care Management training.”

As one of the team who answers queries and concerns from the public and helps individuals and groups in their decision making, I was really pleased to get this request recently.  The team here knows that I am passionate about Care Management.  For me, “Integrated Care Management” has such great potential to make a difference in patients’ experience of healthcare, and I feel strongly that the content is absolutely critical to increasing better outcomes for the complex patients seen in Primary Care. 

First of all, here are some testimonials from people who have taken this course:

• This course was very thorough and up to date. I enjoyed every session and increased my knowledge on the various subjects. I am a registered nurse and have been working in the mental health field for forty years. The course gave me the confidence to explore the field of case management. Over the years I have been exposed to many of these topics. The newest topic to me that will help me was Motivational Interview. Thanks for offering this course to me.
• The material was well organized and the presenters were informative and engaging. 
• This course was very educational for me. I am fairly new to the role "care manager". I now have a new way of viewing situations by getting the patient involved in their care instead of just doing it for them. With the few patients that I have worked with recently, I actually saw more of an improvement with making goals with patients who actually meet their goal
• It was an excellent course. I learned a lot that I will apply to providing care management for my patients.

And here are points to help in the decision-making process

CIPC recognizes that there can be decisional hurdles for those who hold the purse strings in a primary care practice: resources, both human and monetary are stretched thin; every member of the care team is often working at capacity in order to see more patients, and those patients are becoming ever more complex.  So why would a practice leader or administrator pay for online training of care coordinators?

Research conducted over the past decade has repeatedly highlighted the need for a workforce trained in population management and team-based care.  https://integrationacademy.ahrq.gov/education-workforce

As US healthcare advances, and as more of our population experiences multiple comorbid conditions, the workload for Primary Care Providers (PCPs) in traditional, non-integrated models increases.  It is clear that better care can be had by refocusing some of their tasks and roles on other medical professionals, working to the limits of their licenses. 

The management and coordination of ongoing care for targeted populations, for example,  those struggling with depression, diabetes, substance use, is a good strategy, but not one that PCPs have the time or even necessarily the skills to address.  We need trained, competent care coordinators who can reach out to patients about their conditions and link them with community resources and/or additional specialty providers. As for why the UMass Chan CIPC program is a good choice, experts point to the need for evidence-based training:

https://www.integration.samhsa.gov/workforce/Primary_and_Behavioral_Health_Integration_Guiding_Principles_for_Workforce.pdf

Our newly designed Care Management course is being constructed with federal funding through a large Patient-Centered Outcomes Research (PCORI) project that is investigating patient outcomes of behavioral health integration in primary care practices across the country.  PCORI will be gathering data, and as the Center always does, we will also be gathering data from course participants.

We share research on our “Primary Care Behavioral Health” and “Intensive Training in Motivational Interviewing” courses here: https://www.umassmed.edu/cipc/scholarship-research/faculty-publications/  Our courses are taught by UMass Chan Medical School faculty who are actively engaged in clinical work.  We know both sides: theory and practice.

Finally, because our faculty has been engaged in primary care integration since its inception, we recognize the challenges as well as the benefits and acknowledge that this is hard work that takes time.  Each of our courses grants participants access to modules and materials for a full year.  We offer monthly live webinars to bring faculty and learners together to question and discuss as new skills are tried and as issues are experienced.  We know of no other online teaching organization that offers such support. 

I hope these points will help convince you or your boss that this course is a meaningful, cost-effective training that will help patients.  

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