Ohio hospital program to help patients navigate health care system

Huron Hospital in East Cleveland is using a three-year, $100,000 grant to begin a program to help its patients navigate the sometimes overwelming health care system (Source: “Navigators help cancer patients move through the health care system,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, Dec. 30, 2008).

A navigator program involves training community members, many of whom do not have a medical background, to assist patients in understanding billing matters, treatment and diagnostics. The New York City-based Harold P. Freeman Patient Navigation Institute, which pioneered the concept, will teach hospital officials how to set up the program and train navigators in an effort to ensure that cancer patients get appropriate and timely care.

Dr. Harold Freeman started the first navigator program in 1990 at Harlem Hospital Center and improved five-year cancer survival rates there from 39 percent to 70 percent.

Cancer patients throughout Ohio also can access one of 17 navigators through the American Cancer Society, which also worked with Freeman in setting up its program.