Anyone familiar with workers’ compensation and the managed care industry should be aware of the impact that technology has on a nurse case manager’s daily workflow. While the nurse’s primary role is to ensure the injured worker is cared for, their job also involves facilitating the workers’ compensation claims process by advocating for the injured workers and their medical needs, and ensuring a consistent line of communication between providers, adjusters, and the employer. Optimal Case Management has been able to deliver on improved patient outcomes on both ends of the spectrum with the use of DataCare’s Ahshay Case Management solution.

Thomas Kokkines, Vice President of Optimal Case Management, stated “The reporting offered through Ahshay along with the evidence-based data that ODG provides allows us to paint a clear picture to our clients on how our nurses are positively impacting return-to-work results. The information captured in Ahshay allows us to analyze various data elements that can be useful to not just our clients, but our nurses and management.”

In addition, Thomas also mentioned “Our team is a medical resource without preconceived notions or personal bias, and approaches each claim with eyes wide open. We exist because we believe that employees are every organization’s most valuable asset and when injured, they deserve the very best care, guidance, compassion, and respect. This allows our nurses to gain trust as medical expert consultants by all points of contact, which provide the best return-to-work results.”

Optimal Case Management began serving the workers’ compensation industry with a goal to drive patient engagement and to improve return-to-work outcomes. In order to make this possible, the company needed to adopt a system with technological capabilities including integration of medical guidelines, custom reporting and billing functions, and document management. These features reduced administrative time for their nurses, and allowed them to increase patient engagement efforts. DataCare’s cloud-based Ahshay platform ties in all of these features to create a streamlined workflow for nurse case managers. This has allowed DataCare to support Optimal Case Management for their current needs, while providing the necessary structure and technology for future growth and unseen changes.