what does a clinical case manager do?

Clinical case managers play an important role in the healthcare-delivery puzzle, serving as important advocates who connect people with the affordable healthcare they need. That covers a host of different scenarios — from coordinating a patient's clinical care to helping them navigate insurance and hospital bureaucracies or serving as the first point of contact for a patient in crisis.

While clinical case managers often specialize in one area, like drug rehabilitation or elder care, they share a common mission: changing and saving lives through great clinical care. Here's what a day in the life of a clinical case manager looks like in terms of major responsibilities:

• assessing patients' treatment needs and continuously monitoring and evaluating individual treatment plans and progress
• admitting new patients and managing orientations
• completing intake interviews to determine clinical needs
• establishing treatment programs, including setting schedules, coordinating services and arranging patients' transportation and companion needs
• maintaining client records and case notes
• communicating patients' progress with internal teams and other healthcare providers
• preparing patients' discharges by reviewing individual plans and coordinating post-discharge requirements

what are the key skills of a clinical case manager?

If you're ready to take on the challenges clinical case managers face every day, then it's time for you to begin thinking about the skills you'll need to highlight on your resume. For a role like this, you'll want to ensure you speak to both your "hard" clinical skills — like patient care, crisis management and experience with home-based care — as well as the "soft" skills that speak both to your empathic nature and ability to manage a busy workload.

To best showcase your strengths as a candidate, be sure to put these skills front and center:

• case management
• collaboration
• communication skills
• crisis intervention and management
• emotional intelligence (EQ)
• home-based healthcare
• patient care
• problem solving
• time management
• treatment and care planning

how do you become a clinical case manager?

If you like what you've read so far, then the next thing you'll want to know about being a clinical case manager is how exactly you become one.

To do just that, you'll need to get your hands on the following credentials:

• bachelor's and master's degrees in either nursing or social work from an institution accredited by the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE)
• state licensure in the state in which you'll be working

what is the salary of a clinical case manager?

Based on the latest pay data available, average hourly wages for clinical case managers can be divided into three tiers, depending on an individual's location, responsibilities and level of expertise. The three tiers include:

And here's how that nets out in terms of annual salaries, based on a 40-hour workweek:

Want to dive deeper into the salary data for this role across different markets? We've got you covered there, too. Head on over to our free salary comparison tool, which collects specific pay rates for clinical case manager roles across the U.S.

key takeaways

Now that you've taken in all of this information, you should have a much clearer picture of what it takes to become a clinical case manager as well as some of the many responsibilities you'll have in the role.

To recap, in this article we've covered:

• what clinical case managers do on a daily basis
• the training and experience you'll need to succeed in the role
• key skills to highlight on your resume
• what you can expect to make as a clinical case manager
• ... and a whole lot more!

Ready to land your next great role as a clinical case manager? Great! Start your search today by browsing all of the clinical case manager jobs Randstad has available.