What is a Patient Navigator: All you Need to Know About

 A patient navigator is a person who assists patients through and around obstacles in the complicated healthcare system. They help to ensure that patient is getting diagnosed and proper treatment on time. Social worker, people associated with the healthcare system, or nurses, plays the role of a patient navigator. In other words, a navigator can be female, male, young, old with different backgrounds. But the large chunk of navigators today are women, mainly nurses. Some navigators have professional training and others don’t. Their main role is to offer assistance to patients, families, and primary caregivers to help overcome healthcare barriers and facilitate timely access to healthcare resources.

The process of patient navigation may include going through patient screening, diagnosis, treatment, informing the patient in the financial aspect, managing healthcare records, accommodating interpretative language when required, organizing schedules, and managing requirements and follow-up of a severe medical condition such as cancer. They also help patients to communicate with their healthcare providers so that they get the proper information about their health status. It will help them to make decisions regarding their health.

Besides, they will assist you in getting appointments with doctors' visits and medical tests. They will also get you financial, legal, and social support. They work closely around, health advocates, the insurance company, case managers, and other people who influence the patient’s health. They also play a vital role in ensuring hospital safety when a patient is in the hospital.

The Healthcare system is very large and complex. The diagnosis and treatment of severe diseases are getting more complex and things get fall from the cracks. There are a lot of barriers to access, especially financial. Consequently, the demand for healthcare advocates is increasing rampantly. A patient advocate or navigator works directly with the patient and families and they get paid by the individuals and families. The private services are not generally come under insurance. However, many studies show that good coordination of medical care saves money and improves results. Their work is to help patient’s families, disease result, insurance problems, finding doctors, understanding options, and treatment processes. In addition to that, they mobilize resources, manage medical paperwork, handle the legal paperwork.

Patient navigators play a vital role in hospitals. Most of the people that come to this profession have been through a life-changing medical event, either for themselves or a friend or loved one. From that event, they have gained the experience of figuring out things during diagnosis and treatment. They have faced a lack of coordination, danger, and inefficiencies in the healthcare delivery system. From that experience, they learned a lot. And now they want to help and share what they have learned by offering their services. Today, many nurses, social workers are showing interest in becoming a patient advocate after working within the healthcare system. In general, hospitals hire medically-licensed nurses and other professionals to take care of patients and serve as in-house patient navigators.