Developing standards and quality measurements for case management practice.

Case management is a service offered in most health care and social service settings, but a universal definition and standards for practice, applicable to the various case management models, do not exist. Without nationally accepted standards and quality measures for community-based long-term-care case management, many agencies are scrambling to create them in order to justify their services to payers. This article describes the method followed by one county agency serving low-income elders and people with disabilities to create process standards and quality measures for case management practice. The project involved experienced case management staff who created measurement tools encompassing measures of 12 case management activities. Their goal was to justify the importance of the service being offered, to set minimum practice standards, and to raise the awareness and level of quality of case management practice.