Coordinated care for the neuroscience patient: future directions.

A coordinated care model was developed on a neuroscience unit to achieve positive outcomes in a cost-effective environment. This included the development of a patient care coordinator (PCC) role, critical paths and a system for variance tracking. The PCC was responsible for coordinating care of patients and ensuring that patients progressed toward expected outcomes. Multidisciplinary critical paths were developed for four medical diagnoses. To evaluate the effectiveness of the program, an analysis of length of stay data, cost comparison, patient and staff satisfaction, and variance reports of one critical path, the microvascular decompression for trigeminal neuralgia were completed. Results from the pilot project were positive and provided valuable information for the use of coordinated care as a hospital-wide patient care delivery model.