Patient issues have become more complex recently, and a strain on the healthcare system has increased significantly. Bower (2016) suggests several reasons for these changes: aging of baby boomers, a growing number of people with chronic illnesses, a dramatic increase in outpatient surgery, and a greater reliance on self-care. Under these circumstances, care coordination has become an essential issue within the healthcare system. Care coordination refers to the synchronization of patient care delivered by different health care providers and professionals. It involves organizing resources and activities and ensuring communication among various specialists engaged in treating a particular patient. The results of effective care coordination include improved patient outcomes, decreased readmission rates, reduced healthcare costs, and overall positive patient experiences. Nurses are the key agents in this process because they are directly involved in providing patient care. Therefore, it is essential for them to be familiar with the care coordination basics that will be discussed further.
Effective care coordination requires healthcare professionals to collaborate with patients and their families to ensure successful patient progression and transitions across different settings in the continuum of care. Menear et al. (2020) propose several effective strategies that can be used to engage patients and their families in patient care. The first strategy is patient education that aims at increasing patients’ knowledge or changes their attitudes in order to improve health outcomes or prevent illness. Patient education may be delivered verbally or with the help of written or electronic tools. Another effective strategy described by Menear et al. (2020) is patient navigation, the purpose of which is to inform patients and their families about the health and social care system and services available to them. This is an important strategy since it helps patients navigate the complicated healthcare system, improves communication within the system, and facilitates patients’ access to care.
Care coordinators should pay particular attention to cultural competence strategies. Brown et al. (2016) argue that cultural differences may lead to conflicts between patients and practitioners regarding medical issues. The researchers emphasize the importance of building rapport and becoming familiar with patients’ beliefs and values to avoid cultural misunderstanding (Brown et al., 2016). Healthcare professionals should address patients’ and their families’ trust concerns and identify their specific needs before making healthcare decisions. As for decision making, Brown et al. (2016) stress that it should be a shared process in which evidence-based decisions of practitioners should be aligned with patients’ informed decisions. Shared decision making is an effective strategy for collaborating with patients and their families that emphasizes patients’ autonomy and helps in care coordination.
Healthcare facilities are often faced with an organizational change of a large scale. While these changes present substantial challenges to healthcare administrators and other employees, patients’ experiences during change implementation should also be taken into consideration. The case of Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) described by Carlson et al. (2019) demonstrates how healthcare organizations can mitigate negative effects experienced by patients during a large-scale organizational change. During the implementation of new electronic health records, VUMC identified aspects of change management that were visible to patients. In order to address patients’ concerns or negative experiences related to change, the healthcare facility informed patients about the oncoming change and included patients in the planning process. VUMC also collected feedback from patients to adjust the change to patients’ needs. Communication with patients during change implementation is essential, and employees should be trained to put patients’ concerns first even at the time when they themselves feel stress because of change.
Healthcare professionals are often faced with ethical issues and dilemmas when it comes to decision making. One of the most common ethical issues that care coordinators encounter in their practice is privacy and confidentiality. Care coordinators have to communicate with different healthcare specialists to collect and share information about patients for developing coordinated care plans. Therefore, they have to make sure not to disclose patients’ confidential information to third parties. However, according to Strom‐G
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