CM program helps make hospital profitable.

By implementing a case management program for the first time last year, Bradford Regional Medical Center (PA) managed to turn around a trend in which the 150-bed hospital lost $2.6 million in operating expenses in 1997. Case managers were assigned not to units but to groups of physicians to gain physician trust before focusing on resource utilization. Since the department was formed, the hospitalwide length of stay has dropped by half a day. The next step in the development of the program is to extend it beyond acute care into physicians' offices and into Bradford's nursing home to reduce rehospitalization, particularly for congestive heart failure patients.