The CCMC's national study of case manager job descriptions: an understanding of the activities, role relationships, knowledges, skills, and abilities.

Defining the roles and functions of case managers is crucial in today's healthcare environment and necessary for the case management field. One way to address this issue is through the examination of case managers' job descriptions used in various healthcare organizations. The study reported herein used qualitative analysis procedures and the latent class cluster analysis method to examine a national sample of 1028 job descriptions of case managers. The study identified the activities, role relationships, knowledge, skills, and abilities of case managers working in varied settings. It also described the changes that occurred in the practice of case management, based on these job descriptions, over 5 years: from the mid-1990s until the early 2000s. One benefit of this study was a change in one eligibility criterion of the CCM credential. Another was the development of a taxonomy of case managers' roles and functions that can be used as a step toward standardization of case managers' job descriptions.