1. Miracle workers: we pull rabbits out of hats we didn’t know had rabbits!
2. Peacemakers: we smooth out the roads between obnoxious uncooperative providers and our injured workers, other providers, adjusters, claims examiners, and team managers!
3. Bridges: we lay ourselves down like bridges over troubled waters to get our injured workers to appropriate providers within days instead of weeks even when they’re not taking new patients, back to work modified duty when their restrictions would prevent anyone else from even being in the vicinity of a workplace, and back to society and their communities to enjoy life again!
4. Multi-taskers: we eat, drink, type our notes and reports, talk on the phone to injured workers and doctors’ offices, organize our desks, pet our dog, and answer our spouse’s questions about the weekend all at the same time.
5. Problem solvers: we solve personality conflicts, appointment conflicts, logistic questions, and time constraints and still manage to take a day off!
6. Manager managers: we “educate” our managers on the reality of our caseloads while making them think it’s all their idea!
7. Reality framers: we educate our injured workers on the reality of their potential beyond what they see and think they can do, we open up their world of potential!
8. Partners: we partner with doctors, physical therapists, physiatrists, injured workers, and others to get our injured workers from injury to full function as quickly as possible!
9. Negotiators: we wheel & deal to get the best price and delivery time for durable medical equipment, home health care, transportation, translators, and others!
10. Translators: we use our native/second language skills with injured workers who don’t speak English!
11. Jugglers: we work against time zones to reach our injured workers and providers!
12. Money savers: the almighty dollar is at the forefront of everything we do! We save on durable medical equipment, physical therapy length of time, unnecessary diagnostics, using family caregivers instead of home health services, teaching home exercise programs instead of physical therapy, paying family members mileage instead of using transportation services, using language lines instead of face-to-face translators, and of course, on the length of time our files are open, just to name a few!
13. Deadline addicts: we do all we do, against all odds, against the clock, and we get it done on time!
14. And at the end…we look around…and still wonder at why we didn’t get that other THING done!
My name is Carmen Stine, MS, BSN, RN, CCM I live in Delaware, a transplanted New Yorker as of 12 yrs ago. I have been an RN for more than 35 yrs, and a worker’s compensation case manager for more than 15 yrs. I’m a telephonic case manager for a national company. I’ve been married to a great guy named Joe for 37 yrs, I have a dog named Bella, a mixed hound that is adorable & works with me all day lying under my desk. My hobbies are creating bottle art & mixed media jewelry boxes. I’m an avid reader of biographies & memoirs and the Bible.