RN Patient Care Manager

Team Manager

The Team Manager is the leader of the Patient Care Team and is responsible for supervising, evaluating, and coordinating the various component members of the interdisciplinary team. This role ensures continuity of care from admission to discharge or transfer to bereavement, serves as a patient advocate, and coordinates with other social service and health care providers involved in patient care. The Team Manager also maintains patient records from intake through discharge or transfer to bereavement.

Salary Range: 71,200-106,800/Annually

Job Description

• Direct all patient care services for the team, including volunteer and bereavement, ensuring that services are rendered as integrated components of the interdisciplinary plan of care.
• Review information on all pending patient admissions, new admissions (assessments and history), and alive discharges to assure eligibility and appropriateness criteria are met.
• Collaborate with both the team physician and the attending physician regarding palliative care measures for pain and symptom management.
• Assure complete and accurate data and documentation are available to make recertification decisions and ensure those decisions are made on a timely basis.
• Review all imminent alive discharges to assure effective discharge planning.
• Monitor the type and level of team services provided (staffing, medications, HME, supplies, level of care changes to inpatient and continuous care, etc.) to assure they are appropriate and responsive to patient/family needs and expectations.
• Manage the team schedule and assure coordination of services 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to all patients on the team.
• Facilitate team meetings, assuring interdisciplinary input into the update and revision of the plan of care in concert with the changing needs and expectations of the patient and family.
• Participate in on-call rotation.

Staff Supervision and Management

• Interview, select, train, supervise, evaluate, and dismiss team staff in conjunction with the Patient Care Administrator.
• Assure staff competence and performance levels through field visits, evaluating documentation, and providing team-based in-services on Vitas values, hospice principles and practices, and specific team growth needs.
• Act as a resource and mentor for staff regarding clinical issues, documentation, inter- and intra-team problem solving, and appropriate customer service behavior.
• Oversee staff and volunteer schedules, scheduling, and territory assignments to assure equitable workload distribution and that all staff can meet overall productivity expectations.
• Review and approve payroll, ensuring that employees have documented accurate time, mileage, and additional expenses.

Quality Improvement/Regulatory Compliance

• Monitor clinical records and all team activities to ensure accuracy, completeness, and compliance with VITAS policy and all regulatory bodies.
• Develop and implement performance improvement activities to respond to service issues and challenges; participate in programs related to quality and service improvement.
• Ensure that the team completes proactive patient/family satisfaction surveys and implements Quality Improvement measures and standards.
• Assist with surveys and requests from regulatory bodies and intermediaries as directed by local program.
• Perform substantive chart reviews to assure evidence of quality care delivery.
• Participate in Outcomes Management and annual program review.
• Perform utilization review of continuous care and inpatient levels of care for all patients on the team.

Customer Service/Sales/Marketing

• Assure that problems/grievances/service failures experienced by individual patients/families or physicians/MCOs are addressed with team members, vendors, other VITAS departments, and resolved promptly and satisfactorily.
• Analyze customer service issues on the team to identify causes; work with individual team members as well as the entire team to improve performance.
• Personally speak with patients/families and their attending physicians when a patient is considering revocation to seek satisfactory solutions to avoid unnecessary revocation.
• Regularly visit LTC and Contract Bed facilities to assure care plan integration, customer satisfaction, and discuss criteria for determining appropriateness.
• Participate in providing in-services to customers along with other team members, Patient Care Administrators, and other program staff.
• Participate in professional, voluntary, or community service organizations.

Cost Containment

• Verify/approve admitting IPOC diagnosis, treatments, staffing, and supplies.
• Monitor utilization of resources by every patient to assure cost-effective delivery of services.
• Control and be accountable for productivity, labor, and all related patient care costs concerning budget.
• Approve all bills/invoices related to patient care services.

Professional Development

• Attend in-services, educational seminars, and workshops.
• Develop and achieve professional growth goals and objectives.
• Participate as a mentor for newly hired Team Managers.

Requirements

• Reliable transportation with appropriate license and insurance coverage for driver and passengers.
• Private telephone in home.
• Knowledge of the principles and practices of primary medical and nursing care, with at least a working knowledge of oncologic nursing and palliative care.
• Basic understanding of interpersonal dynamics within the working relationships of an interdisciplinary health care team, along with knowledge of the process of dying and bereavement.
• Working knowledge of VITAS information system (Vx) and ability to utilize management reports.
• Two years successful supervisory experience or equivalent in a health care organization.

Education

• Bachelor's degree preferred.
• Current and valid R.N. License to practice in the state where the VITAS program is located.