The term “case management” can have various meanings depending on where you work. For example, a doctor might use it when referring to caring for a patient, whereas a lawyer would say they’re working on a legal proceeding. Additionally, customer service teams often use the term when responding to customer requests and corporate investigations are typically conducted by corporate management teams. In other words, case management is a methodology where various tasks are conducted with a central focus in mind, i.e. the desired outcome—such as when a doctor treats an ill patient according to pre-established protocols, or a lawyer references existing data and past cases to achieve justice, or an organization identifies potential risks and outlines steps to mitigate them. So, what are cases really and what are the four key types of case works.
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What Are Cases?
The term “case management” refers to the process of using a specific unit of work, known as a “case,” in order to achieve the desired business goal. A few examples of cases include customer requests, insurance claims, or patient records.
The case, much like an electronic folder, contains all required deeds, documents and information to reach the goal. The case also has the ability to collect needed data, set processes in motion, manage complaints/problems as they arise escalations, detect changes and make decisions accordingly.
Parent and Child Cases
There may also be cases within other cases, like nesting dolls. The contained case is known as the parent case and the containing case is the child case. For example, an insurance company might organize their customers into cases, and each customer would have their claims inside their customer file. In this instance, the customer file would be the parent case and the insurance claim would be the child. Parent-child relationships are key because they allow for horizontal scaling. A parent case can branch off into multiple child cases, all of which can be worked on in parallel. The parent case then functions as a way to keep track of the relationships between all the child cases.
Key Types of Case Work
There are four different types of casework, each varying in levels of structure. To best understand this work, picturing it on a continuum in the following sequence is more helpful
Process to Decision
Process-to-decision casework is, as the name suggests, a process that leads to a decision. This type of case management is more rigid than other cases because it doesn’t occur regularly. To better understand, let’s use the example of patient care. Each day medical providers have people come to see them for checkups, sudden illness, injury or other concerns–this means that appointments are not regular. Therefore this can be classified as an ‘ad hoc’ nature which in turn makes this work case management. Even though medical teams’ work is unpredictable, they must rigidly follow specific procedures for each patient. These processes are defined and generate decisions, so we categorize this type of work as process-to-decision casework.
A few examples of process-to-decision casework are as follows:
- Regulatory Compliance: For example, if a customer requests information from a company under GDPR or CCPA guidelines, the organization receiving the request needs to identify what data is relevant, track and catalogue where that data exists across departments, map how it flows between those departments, and finally provide the requested information to the customer.
- Routine Patient Care: With a patient portal, patients and medical staff can easily access important information such as past interactions, lab work results, upcoming appointments, and prescriptions.
- Pharmaceutical Product Management: This includes anything from clinical study protocols and monitoring to product registration and horizon scanning.
Service Requests
Service request casework, generally speaking, revolves around service-based decisions such as approval cycles and proactive maintenance. In addition, it also ensures that contractual obligations are being met by all parties involved.
Some examples of typical service request casework include
- Insurance Claims Management: Teams taking in claims, collect various pieces of information, detect possible fraudulent activity, work together across different lines of business to resolve the case, and refer back to these claims audits over time.
- Field And Site Maintenance: When staff members are interacting with clients and managing tasks such as dispatching employees, filling out client forms, ensuring safety, etc., it is vital that the organization runs smoothly.
- Customer Service: When contact and call centre support teams need to retrieve data from multiple systems quickly to help customers, Proof can be a lifesaver.
Incident Management
Organizations use incident management casework to identify and resolve potential risks before they occur. This proactive approach can also be used reactively, once an incident has already happened. Some examples of incident management casework include
- Facility Management: From writing initial reports to scheduling timed maintenance kickoffs and assigning work to staff, managing timelines, and reporting on what was accomplished and what will need work in the future – I am experienced in project management.
- Emergency Response: By dispatching units to scenes, notifying stakeholders of the status of the situation, and taking action based on the information gathered, we can resolve issues more quickly.
- Trade Surveillance: Corporate teams use proof to monitor financial activity, investigate potential problems, and take steps to prevent risks within the organization.
Investigations
Investigation casework frequently leads from a particular event or circumstance. It implies collecting and grappling with evidence, both documentarily and through human interactions and perspectives, as well as capturing information via research. The following are examples of investigation casework:
- Legal Matters: Attorneys use this software to collect data and figure out the best way to proceed with their cases. In this type of legal scenario, they need to be able to manage where they want the case to go next based on their findings.
- Accident Investigations: Where law enforcement and other organizations are needed to manage the scene, make decisions, and take action accordingly while being able to document everything in a system that can be later audited.
- HR Grievances: HR teams have to juggle a lot of information, and they need to be able to quickly gather it all, analyze it, take any necessary actions, give updates on company progress and check if things were done correctly.
It is crucial to keep in mind that this reflects a spectrum instead of one-size-fits-all categories. The nature of your work may not match up precisely to any single type of case management. More likely, different elements of the intricate work you do comprise various parts of the continuum. Let’s use federal grants management as an example. Although organizations need a standardized way of managing grant requests and following federal regulations, they also need enough flexibility in case management approach to make agents more efficient and improve the requester’s experience overall. Agents should be able to look at data from different sources all at once instead of having to jump around between them. With a solution that combines process-to-decision and service request case management, the company would be able to have a more comprehensive view of all the data necessary to make an informed decision when approving or denying applications—and do so quickly for faster delivery of funds.
Speridian Technologies specializes in providing government organizations with custom case management solutions that are designed to meet their specific needs. Services like Gov CX and Align give these organizations a competitive edge by providing them with the tools they need to be successful. CaseXellence provides technology solutions for a broad scope of industrial systems, such as law, financial technology, and child support services. By utilizing case management with CaseXellence as the means, organizations can gain an effective system no matter what field they cater to.