JOB PURPOSE OR MISSION: Performs professional social work to facilitate the movement of patients through the continuum of care while ensuring their biopsychosocial needs are met as appropriate for the age population served, as defined in the department’s scope of service.

PERFORMANCE CRITERIA

CRITERIA A:Everyday Excellence Values - Employee demonstrates Everyday Excellence values in the day-to-day performance of their job.

PERFORMANCE STANDARDS:

•Demonstrates courtesy and caring to each other, patients and their families, physicians, and the community.

•Takes initiative in living our Everyday Excellence values and vital signs.

•Takes initiative in identifying customer needs before the customer asks.

•Participates in teamwork willingly and with enthusiasm.

•Demonstrates respect for the dignity and privacy needs of customers through personal action and attention to the environment of care.

•Keeps customers informed, answers customer questions and anticipates information needs of customers.

CRITERIA B:Corporate Compliance - Employee demonstrates commitment to the Code of Conduct, Conflict of Interest Guidelines, and the GHS Corporate Compliance Guidelines.

PERFORMANCE STANDARDS

•Practices diligence in fulfilling the regulatory and legal requirements of the position and department.

•Maintains accurate and reliable patient/organizational records.

•Maintains professional relationships with appropriate officials; communicates honesty and completely; behaves in a fair and nondiscriminatory manner in all professional contacts.

CRITERIA C:Personal Achievement - Employee demonstrates initiative in achieving work goals and meeting personal objectives.

PERFORMANCE STANDARDS

•Uses accepted procedures and practices to complete assignments. Uses creative and proactive solutions to achieve objectives even when workload and demands are high.

•Adheres to high moral principles of honesty, loyalty, sincerity, and fairness.

•Upholds the ethical standards of the organization.

CRITERIA D:Performance Improvement - Employee actively participates in Performance Improvement activities and incorporates quality improvement standards in his/her job performance.

PERFORMANCE STANDARDS

•Optimizes talents, skills, and abilities in achieving excellence in meeting and exceeding customer expectations.

•Initiates or redesigns to continuously improve work processes.

•Contributes ideas and suggestions to improve approaches to work processes.

•Willingly participates in organization and/or department quality initiatives.

CRITERIA E:Cost Management - Employee demonstrates effective cost management practices.

PERFORMANCE STANDARDS

•Effectively manages time and resources.

•Makes conscious effort to effectively utilize the resources of the organization — material, human, and financial.

•Consistently looks for and uses resource saving processes.

CRITERIA F:Patient & Employee Safety - Employee actively participates in and demonstrates effective patient and employee safety practices.

PERFORMANCE STANDARDS

•Employee effectively communicates, demonstrates, coordinates, and emphasizes patient and employee safety.

•Employee proactively reports errors, potential errors, injuries, or potential injuries.

•Employee always demonstrates departmental specific patient and employee safety standards.

•Employee demonstrates the use of proper safety techniques, equipment and devices and follows safety policies, procedures, and plans.

JOB FUNCTIONS

ESSENTIAL JOB FUNCTIONS include, but are not limited to:

1. Provides assessment and subsequent interventions to patients and their families.

PERFORMANCE STANDARDS:

•Develops accurate comprehensive psychosocial assessments and examines current problems and relevant bio-psychosocial and environmental factors, within the mandated time frames.

•Communicate aspects of the assessment to members of the healthcare team, patient, and significant others, ensuring that information is always current.

•Demonstrates an ability to assess suspected or actual abuse and neglect cases and follows current state and hospital policies on reporting such cases.

•Identifies potential suicidal and/or homicidal risks with patients, utilizes established methods and interventions as appropriate to address and follows reporting regulations.

•Arranges and facilitates group therapies, individual therapy and family sessions as ordered by the providers.

•Monitors and assesses ongoing issues referring to patients and their families. Communicates and documents same and updates treatment planning as needed.

•Effectively participates as an interdisciplinary team member in developing the plan of care as appropriate.

•Communicates verbally with tact and sensitivity towards the patients and their families. 

•Advocates for patient by assessing that patient healthcare needs are being addressed in the most appropriate level of care.

•Screens patients to determine appropriate level of care coordination interventions based on risk factors related to barriers that impact progression-of-care.

•Assess patient situations by collecting information from the patient and family, professional and non-professional caregivers, employers (as appropriate), and health records to identify individual needs to develop a comprehensive progression of care management plan and assessment that will address those needs. 

•Collaborates with the Comprehensive Care Team to participate in developing a medical treatment plan appropriate to the patients’ level of care. 

•Encourage patient to participate in decision making and assists in patient/family education as needed, to aid in communication and input in the treatment plan.

•Works with other team members to improve patient outcomes.

•Educates members of the healthcare team on the appropriate access to and use of various resources and levels of care.

•Recognizes and respond appropriately to risk factors. 

2. Implements a wholistic and patient driven approach to the care management.

PERFORMANCE STANDARDS:

•Assess the effectiveness of services and their outcomes in concert with the Comprehensive Care clinical team, recommending appropriate plan modifications to assure that treatment objectives are met. 

•Promotes use of evidence-based protocols to influence high quality and cost-effective care.

•Actively participates in bi-weekly care team meetings/rounds to discuss the care of the patient and collaborate with the Comprehensive Care team.

3.Upholds standards of social work ethics prescribed by the NASW and General Health System.

PERFORMANCE STANDARDS:

•Maintains state licensure and/or certification, appropriately utilizes Ethics Committee, upholds professional confidentiality, meets annual CEU requirements.

4.Provides oversight of other staff as needed.

PERFORMANCE STANDARDS:

•Sign off on undergraduate assessments as assigned by supervisor.

•Provides supervision of undergraduates, MSW and LPC’s as assigned by supervisor.

5. Facilitates the movement of patients through the continuum of care by following departmental process.

PERFORMANCE STANDARDS:

•Initiates, communicates, and collaborates with other healthcare professionals, and updates discharge plans following department policy guidelines.

•Coordinates community resources and referral sources to achieve optimum results.

•Conducts individual sessions as per program schedule or indicated.

5.Performs all other duties as assigned.

EXPERIENCE REQUIREMENTS

Twenty-four (24) months recent and relevant experience.

EDUCATIONAL REQUIREMENTS

Masters Degree in Counseling, Psychology or Social Work

SPECIAL SKILL, LICENSE AND KNOWLEDGE REQUIREMENTS

Current LPC license

Current CPR certification

HIPAA REQUIREMENTS:

Maintains knowledge of and adherence to all applicable HIPAA regulations appropriate to Job Position including but not limited to: Medical records without limitation both paper and electronic, patient demographics, lab, radiology, film results, patient information related to surgery or appointment schedules, medical records related to quality data, patient financial information, 3rd party billing, patients related complaints, information related to patient location, and/or patients religious beliefs.

SAFETY REQUIREMENTS:

Maintains knowledge of and adherence to all applicable safety practices appropriate to Job Position including but not limited to: Incident reporting, handling of waste, PPE, exposure control plans, hand washing, environment of care, patient identification, receiving orders for patients, and monitoring clinical alarms.