The vision
An NCI-designated cancer center sought to provide greater access to care and create a frictionless patient experience. Launching an institution-wide navigation program helps reduce barriers like lengthy wait times, financial clearance, and excessive patient touchpoints. It can also grow community reach, drive higher impact research breakthroughs, and set new standards for high-value cancer care.
Common questions organizations must consider for new navigation programs:
- How does this differ from our current navigation efforts?
- How does a navigator differ from APPs, nurses in an access center, and clinic nurses?
- Does a navigator have to be a nurse?
- How will it impact the care team structure?
- How many navigators will we need and to whom will they report?
- What is the expected ROI?
Co-creating the solution
To ensure every patient’s individualized needs are met throughout their cancer journey, the organization sought to define standard navigation functions, key intervention points where the journey is often complicated for patients, and the role of navigators.
Chartis evaluated existing navigation efforts and found varying patient experiences and levels of support throughout a patient’s journey, depending on the disease site and sub-specialties. For example, one specialty used credentialed oncology nurse navigators while other specialties leveraged advanced practice providers (APPs).
Chartis created a new nurse navigator role, identified priority intervention points, established standard operating procedures, and delineated the nurse navigator function from other nurse roles. This was piloted in four disease sites to refine the design based on performance results and patient and care team feedback. The pilot also informed workforce sizing refinements and the organization structure required to scale the navigation model enterprise-wide.
