Assessing the Best Candidate for the Role: A tool kit for Success Job Description of a Care Coordinator

A care coordinator collaborates with patients, medical staff, and healthcare professionals to design patients’ healthcare plans and maintain them.  They often help the elderly or disabled patients by communicating on their behalf with family, healthcare providers, nurses, and doctors. Care Coordinators inform patients about their treatments, alternative treatment options, conditions, and help them contact healthcare workers to assess their status and progress (Gross, 2020).  Great communication skills are required for a person to assume the role of a care coordinator. This is attributable to the fact that Care Coordinators partner with patients to identify their needs and assess interventions (Gross, 2020). Additionally, Care Coordinators must have leadership qualities to guide individuals from distinct backgrounds in the healthcare system.

A Care Coordinator primary responsibility in a rural facility are to develop and coordinate care programs, handle patient education and case management, and communicate between family, patients, and health professions. A Care Coordinator is expected create schedules, recruit and train staff, design patient goals, maintain patient’s quality of care and confidentiality and monitor progress. While working in rural community, they must be culturally competent to meet the needs of the ethnically diverse patient population.

Interview Questions

1. How do you handle ethical dilemmas in your setting as a nurse leader?
2. How do you manage to collaborate with doctors, physicians and allied staff in the healthcare setting?
3. How do you handle your nurse duties and leadership responsibilities?
4. Describe your leadership style?
5. How do you handle staff and patients from diverse cultural backgrounds?

Analyzing the Candidate’s Knowledge Related to Ethical Guidelines and Practices to Improve Care Coordination

All healthcare providers should have ethical values. Ethical values differentiate between wrong and right actions, and influence individuals’ decision-making process. In the healthcare setting, the code of ethics help workers acknowledges dilemmas and makes informed decisions and judgments (Haddad & Geiger, 2020). Thus, a competent candidate for the Care Coordinator role should be aware of the American Nurses Association (ANA) Code of Ethics because it helps tackle ethical issues in the healthcare setting and improve care coordination.  Additionally, the potential candidate should be aware of the health care ethics principles, including autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice. These principles provide guideless to solve complicated situations undermining patient’s care and coordination in the healthcare sector.

Analyzing the Candidate’s Knowledge of Laws and Policies within Care Coordination

Various policies and laws exist to improve care coordination among various stakeholders. For instance, the Affordable Care Act allows healthcare providers to create and test new payment and care delivery models that enhance care coordination, reduce spending, and improve health outcomes (AHRQ, 2016). For instance, Accountable Care Organizations are designed to boost care coordination by connecting patients’ providers across systems to minimize medical errors and prevent patients from receiving unnecessary services (AHRQ, 2016). Additionally, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Community-Based Care Transition Program synchronize discharge from healthcare settings to other settings to prevent readmissions.  Health information technologies also facilitate care coordination among professionals from different disciplines.

  The 2014 IMPACT Act also promotes care coordination via standardized data elements. For instance, the Act requires gathering and documentation of standardized data in PAC (post-acute care) settings (Hall, Connor, & O’Malley, 2019).  These settings include long-term healthcare hospitals, inpatient rehabilitation facilities, home health agencies, and skilled nursing facilities. The collection and reporting of standardized data require collaboration between healthcare providers in these settings.  The coordination facilitates the flow of information during transitions between post-acute care settings and other settings to enhance patient outcomes. Thus, the Care Coordinator’s potential candidate should be aware of the IMPACT Act and the Affordable Act influence on care coordination.

Analysis of the Candidates Knowledge Related to Stakeholder and Inter-professional Teams to Implement Care Coordination

Inter-professional team coordination benefits patients with multifaceted healthcare needs.  Mohr et al. (2019) assoc