By Angela Powell Lewis, MSN, RN, CCM
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) recommends driver assistance technology to aid in preventing forward collisions, rear cross-traffic crashes, blind-spot incidents, and unintended lane departures.1 It’s easy to get distracted (cell phone, bickering kids, drowsiness, squirrel… you get the point) and find yourself drifting dangerously outside of your lane. Lane assist helps prevent unintended lane departure by alerting drivers that they’ve crossed into another driver’s lane and/or by actively maintaining the vehicles current position instead of allowing creeping into the other lane.
As with driving, we as case managers can get distracted and find ourselves complacent in our daily routines, taking on non-case management duties because we want to be good team players and striving to be as helpful as possible in a “do more with less” evolving environment. We may not realize, and often without warning, that we’re creeping into another lane and are suddenly headed for a collision of duties and/or potential role fatality. It’s time to turn on your lane assist!
How it Works and Why it Matters.
Lane assist technology consists of both a passive and an active system. The passive system, lane departure warning (LDW), monitors driving and alerts the driver when the vehicle senses that there is drifting into another lane. The active system, lane-keeping assistance (LKA), both detects and takes action to keep the driver from merging unintentionally into another lane. Both systems rely on sensors and cameras to detect boundaries.
Mission creep (or unintended lane departure, if you will) is a real challenge in case management. It is often disguised by the effort of wanting to achieve more. It can be quite subtle and is usually the result of an exertion of overall healthcare systems’ pressure. According to a report in March 2026 by the American Hospital Association, increasing costs related to human resources (5.6% increase), supplies (9.9% increase), medicines (13.6% increase), and infrastructure are the key factors putting pressure on hospitals.2 Funding and staffing limitations, leadership directives, and program restructuring, combined with sicker, more complex care patients, result in a strain that causes an unintentional shift or slow accumulation of changes over time. This leads away from the core mission of case management. Having both a passive and active system of monitoring and action is necessary to keep the very essence of case management safe from potential demise and destruction. Make note of your sensors and watch for boundaries. Don’t ignore the warnings and be ready to take action if you feel yourself drifting!
But what are the limitations, and is it really worth it?
Even the best technology can come with limitations. Sensor reliability, road conditions, weather, and driver behavior all significantly impact lane assist capability.1 Lane-keeping technology may become confused by faded paint, road debris, shadows, unexpected markings, or grooves in the road.
Mission creep offers the opportunity for case managers to become distracted from the mission of case management, thereby potentially leading to confusion among leadership and loss of stakeholder trust and support. Oftentimes, because what we do can be vague, covered in taskings that are far from case management, and shadowed in our own misalignment of clarity and focus, this can lead to a misuse of resources, lack of progress, and diminished impact of services. This jeopardizes case management overall and puts the profession at risk for potential funding loss and/or realignment of positions and roles.
Know your limitations, monitor the healthcare environment, stay sensitive to changing conditions as the care system evolves, don’t neglect the basics of case management, and be ready to grab the wheel, pivot, and adjust your behavior. It’s worth it!
Should You Keep Lane Assist On?
Absolutely! Although helpful at the moment, activities outside the core mission of case management are distracting and lead us away from our goals, reducing our impact and effectiveness and ultimately leading to role dismantlement. Keeping lane assist on in case management means learning about or refamiliarizing yourself with the basics of the profession.
Examples include: getting reacquainted with The Commission’s Case Management Body of Knowledge (CMBOK), 3 centering your activities around the knowledge framework and using its concepts to highlight and strategically strengthen your position and discussion on the value of case management services; and regularly reminding your leadership about how you do what you do in case management using the Case Management Society of America (CMSA) Standards of Practice 4 and its definitions, concepts, strategies, and trusted guidance on the delivery of evidence-based care. It means being astute to practicing case management as a specialty profession, with a clear philosophy and guiding principles that lead to efficacious care for our patients and teams.
Having lane assistance is staying on the cutting edge of evolving technologies through continuing education. It’s being involved in professional organizations, like the CMSA, to maximize professional collaboration in advancing the profession and impacting legislation through the active pursuit of health equity and equality. Lane assistance can also be achieved by conducting regular program evaluations, openly communicating with leadership and stakeholders to share both challenges and successes, and soliciting feedback from the community that you serve. Lane assistance in case management is continually assessing your role in the organization and pushing back against tasks that draw you away from the intensive work required to advocate for, support, and empower the most medically fragile, complex, and cost-intensive patient care cases.
So, should you turn on your lane assist? The answer is YES! Use all the tools to help you stay in your case management lane. Distractions come in many forms but having a clear and concise mission is critical to staying centered along the journey. Create boundaries, take note of your position frequently, don’t ignore the warnings, and make a conscious effort to STAY in YOUR LANE!
References.
- National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Driver assistance technologies. NHTSA website. Accessed April 23, 2026. https://www.nhtsa.gov/vehicle-safety/driver-assistance-technologies
- American Hospital Association. The Costs of Caring: 2026 Report. Chicago, IL: American Hospital Association; March 2026.
- Commission for Case Manager Certification. Case Management Body of Knowledge (CMBOK). CCMC website. Accessed April 23, 2026. https://www.cmbodyofknowledge.com
- Case Management Society of America. Standards of Practice for Case Management. Little Rock, AR: CMSA; 2022.
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