The Key Benefits of Case Management

When organizations need to cull information together quickly, case management makes the difference.

For safety, risk, compliance, and emergency managers, success often comes down to getting lots of information gathered and distributed quickly. That’s where case management comes in. Not only is the approach fundamentally adaptive, case management is also applicable to diverse types of complex, unpredictable work, all involving the accessing of fragmented resources (often data) to meet the fast-changing needs of clients.

For safety, risk, compliance, and emergency managers, success often comes down to getting lots of information gathered and distributed quickly. That’s where case management comes in. Not only is the approach fundamentally adaptive, case management is also applicable to diverse types of complex, unpredictable work, all involving the accessing of fragmented resources (often data) to meet the fast-changing needs of clients.

What’s more, case management interventions form the link between the client and the service delivery system to yield better, faster outcomes. How, exactly? Well, practitioners (i.e. case managers) are enabled to more efficiently interact with the wider environment of information, resources, and services. In turn, those practitioners make more accurate decisions throughout the lifecycle of the case, which creates a better service experience for clients.

Of course, the core use cases that stand to benefit the most from these techniques have something in common. In them, data exists in surfeits (data overload). Not just that. But relevant information is also spread across multiple, siloed databases (and channels), making it difficult to access the right information when it’s needed most.

Another example where case management techniques should be brought to bear: multiple, related investigations taking place at the same time, with little transparency between them; or, a use case in which collaborating on a single work-object involves communicating across multiple channels.

In the above scenarios – common in safety and emergency management – work tends to rely on manual processes and systems that have become steadily more complex and convoluted over time. As a result, data hygiene suffers, as does the ability of business owners to productively collect details and information in support of the case. Zooming out, precise examples of the areas in which case management interventions can yield the highest dividends include the following:

• Regulatory compliance, where case management techniques can help ensure that organizations handling cases remain compliant with laws, policies, and procedures. The flexibility of case management itself also allows for the quick adaptation (of rules and processes) to regulatory changes, as well as ensures compliance with insurance contracts and warranty fulfillment. Indeed, in certain sectors, the handling of certain classes of cases often comes under regulatory scrutiny.
• Claims management, where case management techniques can enable the fulfillment of complex claims, involving the collection and consideration of vast quantities of information.
• Facility management, where case management techniques can help with the efficient maintenance of complex, large-scale assets, including facilities spread across multiple locations. A key benefit of case management, here, is the improved ability to identify potential issues, then automate steps to proactively address issues, while maintaining comprehensive records and measures for risk mitigation.
• Emergency response and disaster welfare relief, where case management techniques and capabilities can help better engage field workers about ongoing incidents, enabling the more efficient routing of those responders for faster incident resolution. The improved customer service component of case management can also help in disaster welfare relief, where disaster relief agencies must navigate complex client issues that often require multiple steps to rectify and manage long-term client relationships across at-risk populations.
• Safety and Human Resources grievances, where case management techniques help guarantee that all incidents (e.g. return to work and worker’s compensation cases) are handled according to pre-set policies and procedures, potentially leading to more resolved disputes whose measurable outcomes can improve future incident handling. Safety and security accident investigations also stand to benefit from techniques which facilitate the gathering of information to determine causes, elicit results, and change future behavior.

Of course, the benefits of case management techniques don’t just happen, even if those benefits are applicable to diverse types of work. To be effective, case management involves multiple collaborative phases and more. 

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