Course: Case Management

A comprehensive guide to translating nursing experience into case management career opportunities, covering role fundamentals, skill translation, and pathways to this growing healthcare specialty.

Course Description:

Do you want to use your health care expertise to help patients and families in a whole new way? If you are a great problem solver and someone who enjoys “peeling away the onion” to get to the root cause of a solution, a career in case management may be for you. Don’t throw away all the valuable expertise you have gained in your education and experience—pivot to a growing specialty as a case manager.

Case management is a collaborative process that assesses, plans, implements, coordinates, monitors, and evaluates the options and services required to meet a patient’s health and human service needs. As a case manager, you’ll work behind the scenes to ensure patients receive appropriate, cost-effective care while navigating complex healthcare systems, insurance requirements, and discharge planning. You’ll coordinate care between multiple providers, advocate for patients’ needs, and help reduce hospital readmissions—all while using your clinical expertise to make critical decisions about patient care and resource allocation.

Learning Objectives:
1. Understand the fundamentals practice of case management.
2. Articulate the difference between case management and utilization management!
3. Identify the settings where case management practice happens.
4. Recognize the transferable nursing skills that make a case manager successful.
5. Verbalize the computer skills needed to succeed in this role.
6. Identify resources that can help support your transition.
7. Understand the path to certification in this specialty.

By the end of this program, you will have a basic understanding of the practice of utilization and case management. You will have an opportunity to reflect on the role and assess your aptitude for this type of work. In addition, the learner will be able to articulate practice settings in the health care industry that hire this specialty. You will gain valuable insight and be prepared to act on ways to explore this growing niche in health care.

To further enhance your learning experience, we offer a Case Management Mentorship. Students are individually coached and mentored by the course instructor, Deb Cook-Altonji. Deb has over 45 years of professional business and clinical experience and has been a Certified Case Manager since 1994. She has held a variety of business roles in healthcare with her specialty being case management and patient advocacy. She would love to help you do the same.

About the Instructor:

Deborah (Deb) Cook-Altonji RN, MSN, CCM, SPHR

Finding Joy in Your Career

Deb’s career has spanned a variety of decades of interesting opportunities that took her to places she could never have imagined including travel to forty-three states so far. After her initial work as a pediatric nurse at a tertiary care facility she returned to graduate school to pursue a graduate degree in nursing administration. During her study she realized that traditional health care work was not bringing her the challenge and opportunity for a balanced work life she sought. Her initial business position required her to travel nationwide for a medical manufacturing company doing sales training. In her role she worked with diverse personalities and used her nursing education and background to guide the sales team on how to interact appropriately with the medical team to increase their credibility and effectiveness. Over the course of years’ doors opened to give her increased exposure to a variety of business positions. Her various roles have included sales, business development, sales training, pharmaceutical drug safety, recruitment, case management and other segues from clinical work. She enjoys mentoring nurses to explore the many options available to them beyond the bedside. Her belief is that the first step to landing a successful opportunity is to do self-reflection on your skills and needs. One of her successes was to launch a training program for transitioning nurses from bedside care to positions in case management at both a hospital and payor setting. Deb is eager to share her lessons learned and valuable tips to make the move to capitalize on your background to launch your career in a new direction