Care coordination is essential for well-supported patient self-management. Ensuring people understand their different health conditions and helping them navigate the system improves the patient experience and saves time and resources.
Nursing coordinators provide the time, capacity, and expertise to help patients have better clinical conversations and explore questions that are not clear to them, and to help fill in gaps that could hamper their recovery.
Working closely with GPs and other colleagues in primary care, care coordinators can also conduct case finding. They may have a caseload of identified patients for whom they ensure appropriate support is available to them and their caregivers and that their changing needs are addressed. They focus on groups that reflect the priorities of local primary care networks, health inequalities, or ‘patients at risk’. In North East London, most care coordinators work in a single practice.
The role also supports PCNs in providing improved health in nursing homes.
