By Fadesola Adetosoye

People who have lived in large cities often say they love the neighborhoods. In the best ones, you can find pretty much everything you need within a few blocks of home, from grocers, pharmacies and restaurants to services of all kinds. People get to know you and what you need or want pretty quickly.

A customer relationship management (CRM) system can be set up for use in care management to provide this supportive neighborhood feel. It’s a way of bringing together all the resources a patient needs in one place, and it can enable easy communication between the patient and the caregivers. A CRM becomes the patient’s neighborhood, where he or she is known and understood. And it enhances caregivers’ ability to share relevant information to support the patient’s best outcome.

This is especially useful if you are concerned about the social determinants of health for a patient. Too often, a person’s ability to achieve a good outcome is hindered by socio-economic factors such as income, transportation, lack of family support or even access to high quality food. A CRM system can help you connect the patient to social services and other support systems that can ameliorate these challenges.

Beyond impeding a good outcome, these factors are often the cause of high medical costs for patients. The right supportive systems may forestall ER visits, readmissions and the need for expensive medical interventions.

Creating the neighborhood
Systematic care coordination provides a unique opportunity for health plans to collaborate with clinicians and hospital systems to improve care and provide real-time case management for their health plan members. A CRM platform facilitates health plans’ efforts to integrate the entire spectrum of services that can positively affect patient outcomes. This matters, because healthcare providers don’t always have systems in place to connect patients to non-medical, but critically important, services and support.

The CRM operates as a virtual neighborhood, offering a streamlined and centralized mechanism for coordinating both care and communication about that care. It provides a safe, secure platform for members, their families, the care team and community service providers to share information pertinent to the patient’s well-being. Core functions of a CRM platform enable key components of a care management program like:

• Discharge planning
• Care plan templates
• Distribution of health education content

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