Nursing and coordination
Care coordination
The job of holding your care together, which different people do in different systems and which sometimes nobody does.
A job rather than a profession. Different people do it in different services, and in some there is nobody.
Care coordination is a job rather than a profession. Somebody has to keep the parts of your care talking to each other, chase what has stalled and make sure the same information does not have to be repeated to everyone. In some services a named person does this. In others the work quietly falls to you or to whoever is caring for you, which is worth knowing rather than discovering.
How you reach this person, and who pays, depends on where you live. Set your country in Location and Compass will show what applies there.
What they can help with
- Keeping appointments, referrals and equipment moving
- Making sure the team knows what the other parts of the team have done
- Being one number to ring instead of six
- Helping you prepare for appointments and remember what was decided
- Spotting what has been forgotten, which is usually the real value
When you might meet them
- From early on. Coordination is cheapest to set up before it is needed
- When something has been stuck for weeks and you are not sure who to chase
- When you are repeating your history to every new person you meet
- When several services are involved and none of them mentions the others
Things you could ask about
- Who coordinates my care, and is that a named person?
- If nobody does, who should I ring when something falls between services?
- How do the different parts of my care share information?
- Can I have one contact rather than several?
Not to be confused with
Not the same as an NDIS support coordinator, who coordinates funded disability supports rather than clinical care. In Australia many people have both, doing different jobs, and the overlap is a common source of confusion. In the United States "case manager" usually means an insurance case manager rather than clinical coordination, which is close to the opposite of what the words suggest here.