Raymond Zimmer

Raymond Zimmer – Care Coordinator | Care Alliance of Western Massachusetts

Care Alliance of Western Massachusetts (CAWM) is a partnership of eight agencies working together to connect consumers with long-term services and supports. We are a team of compassionate professionals providing person-centered care coordination services for eligible MassHealth ACO and MCO members ages 3-65.

This video is a part of a series of messages from each of our care providers.

Raymond Zimmer – Care Coordinator

Hi, my name is Ray Zimmer and I’m a Care Coordinator with the Care Alliance of Western Massachusetts. Some people say that our job basically involves locating resources and advocating for services, but I like to think that this job involves a little bit more than just that. As a Care Coordinator, I work on a team with the members’ PCP and members’ ACO coordinator, and the ACO coordinator is the representative of the members’ insurance company. On this team, it is our job to meet with the member and help work on goals they’ve developed or identified as being important to them. Once these goals have been identified it’s my job to help organize a plan with this member to achieve those goals. Some of the things that people have looked for in the past with this job is to be looking for providers. Now, these providers could be therapists, covering varying modalities of therapy. It could be specialists like an endocrinologist or neurologist even. Other things that I’ve been able to do as a care coordinator for the Care Alliance of Western Massachusetts is to help people locate durable medical equipment. That could be a wheelchair, that could be a walker, that could even be a shower grab bars. One of the things we do in working with people to get durable medical equipment is to facilitate the order going from the PCP’s office to the Medical supply office. That doesn’t mean we actually make the order but we what do is we request the PCP and then we track it as far as where it’s gone. The bottom line about this program is that it’s about trying to help the member achieve some sort of sense of stability and basically stay within the comfort of their own home. Now the reason I got in this field’s because I genuinely enjoy helping people and a side perk of doing this type of job is that you get to see members basically empower themselves and achieve their goals. My only job is just to help them locate some resources and point them in the right direction.