The Integrated Case Management Manual: Assisting Complex Patients Regain Physical and Mental Health

This manual presents the Case Management Society of America (CMSA) tested approach towards systematically integrating physical health and mental health case management principles for nurses and other health professionals involved with case and disease management. It incorporates biological, psychological, social, and health care systems, for the purpose of assisting patients with complex health problems to regain health.

Patients with complex health problems comprise approximately 10% of the patient populations, their related medical costs are inordinately high, and their success in regaining health is low. To address the need to reverse these trends, CMSA, Cartesian Solutions, Inc. and INTERMED Foundation have collaborated in developing a training program to foster collaborative and integrated mental health and physical health care for the purpose of improving patient outcomes and reducing healthcare costs. This Manual provides the theoretical and application components for this training program.

The manual takes the learner through the steps needed to begin mastery of the Integrated Case Management approach. It consists of 12 Modules that cover the integrated case management program, and also includes modules on how to complete the INTERMED-Complexity Assessment Grid (IM-CAG). This grid is a complexity assessment tool which case managers complete for each patient. When completed, the IM-CAG grid becomes the basis for effectively integrating care support for patients with health complexities.