Little Rock, AR - The CMSA Board of Directors believes that proving the value of health care services is compromised by the lack of validated, consistently supported, standardized outcome methods regarding the use of case management and other patient care coordination services such as disease management.  Toward that end, the CMSA Board of Directors publicly acknowledged the importance of this issue by becoming the first clinical association to support the mission, impact evaluation principles, and standards setting process of the Population Health Impact (PHI) Institute. 

A resolution supporting this position was unanimously adopted at the association's November 2005 board meeting.  The resolution encourages CMSA members and others in the health care industry -- including providers, payers, consumer organizations, private industry and government purchasers -- to support the principles and standards-setting process of the PHI Institute.

CMSA President, Susan Rogers, RN, BSN, CCM states, "We believe this resolution fully supports CMSA's strategic outcomes initiative.  After all, the PHI Institute, a non-profit entity, was founded to both promote and conduct independent, impartial, accurate and credible evaluations of the economic and clinical outcomes of defined population health programs, using impact methods that are transparent and replicable. These principles are the key pieces of the outcomes puzzle which we feel have been missing until now.  We believe this science-based effort will make a significant contribution towards proving the value of case management and other population health programs.  The credible evaluation processes and methodologies proposed by the PHI Institute will make it easier for market buyers and sellers to make evidence-based ROI determinations and improve clinical resource allocations." 

CMSA's leadership believes such methods are necessary to enable buyers to better compare and contrast different case management programs with each other, and case management to other types of population health interventions.  In fact, these methods have the potential to enable comparisons of all types of population health programs to each other.  According to CMSA's Executive Director, Jeanne Boling, MSN, CRRN, CDMS, CCM,  "Effective outcomes measures have always been a challenge for CMSA (and healthcare associations in general), yet the principles proposed by the PHI Institute represent the most useful framework currently available for stakeholder consensus building and development of generally accepted impact evaluation standards." 

Since 1990, the Case Management Society of America (CMSA) has been tackling fundamental care management issues and promoting innovative healthcare change.  Case management professionals advocate for the needs of patients, assuring that the countries most chronically ill and catastrophically injured people are promptly attended to up and down the healthcare chain.  Ultimately, the reward is a healthier population and a more affordable health care system.  This is an ever-challenging process considering the administrative depth, breadth and fragmentation of the US, and other national healthcare systems, and the fact that numerous providers are often involved in a single case. 

Ms. Boling concludes, "We are delighted the CMSA Board of Directors has embraced this bold position and we are grateful to Dr. Thomas Wilson and the PHI Institute for their leadership in this critical area of the health care industry."