The Commission's CMBOK

The knowledge, skills, abilities and competencies of case managers are essential to ensuring the delivery of safe, high-quality healthcare services to clients and their support systems, including families, caregivers and other significant individuals. Maintaining current professional expertise enables case managers to practice effectively and achieve optimal outcomes. To support this level of practice, the profession relies on a clearly defined Body of Knowledge (BOK). A body of knowledge is a prescribed aggregation of essential knowledge in a particular field or specialty that an individual within the field is expected to have mastered to effectively practice and be considered a practitioner within the specialty. Based on this description of the term body of knowledge, The Commission™ defines the CMBOK as “a comprehensive resource of essential knowledge in the field of case management that a client advocacy professional is expected to master and become knowledgeable, skilled, as well as experienced in, to effectively care for clients and their support systems and be considered a competent practitioner.”

The Commission's mission is “to cultivate a future-ready workforce of client advocacy professionals through certification and interrelated programs and services. Client advocacy professionals, like case managers, represent the interests of clients in complex health, social, employer and community settings, ensuring that clients’ needs and concerns are addressed. The Commission’s CMBOK will assist in preparing that future-ready workforce by providing knowledge that can be used to navigate change in the care of our clients with confidence, the ability to solve complex problems and continue delivering high-quality, human-centered outcomes even as our roles, systems and tools evolve. The Commission’s CMBOK provides case managers and other healthcare professionals with a comprehensive online resource grounded in a clearly defined knowledge framework for case management. The Commission’s CMBOK:

• Reflects generally accepted principles and practices for case managers and client advocacy professionals across various practice settings and professional disciplines.
• Is an aggregation of essential information that describes what client advocacy professionals need to know and be able to do effectively and competently for the primary benefit of clients (consumers of healthcare services) and their support systems.

For client advocacy professionals seeking appropriate, reliable, and current information to support case management activities, The Commission's CMBOK provides an online knowledge resource covering all key case management processes and essential knowledge domains. The Commission's CMBOK is a dynamic reference intended to be continuously updated and peer-reviewed to remain relevant, reliable, credible and cutting-edge. Updates are based on scanning professional case management and other related literature, recommendations of case management experts, latest findings from relevant practice analysis/role and function study research and feedback from users and subject matter experts.

The case management framework relates the skills and knowledge needed with the activities and processes that a case manager performs on the job. The Commission’s CMBOK provides expanded information on case management knowledge topics (domains, subdomains, process, and phases of the process). This work addresses how a topic relates to the competent and effective practice of case management and will continue to expand over time to provide deeper, richer content for all case managers to find current and relevant knowledge to improve and maintain case management competence.

For more information and to subscribe, visit the Case Management Body of Knowledge website.