Abstract
Purpose
Recent advances in cancer treatment have resulted in greatly improved survival, and yet many patients in the USA have not benefited due to poor access to healthcare and difficulty accessing timely care across the cancer care continuum. Recognizing these issues and the need to facilitate discussions on how to improve navigation services for patients with cancer, the National Cancer Policy Forum of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) held a workshop entitled, “Establishing Effective Patient Navigation Programs in Oncology. The purpose of this manuscript is to disseminate the conclusions of this workshop while providing a clinically relevant review of patient navigation in oncology.
Design
Narrative literature review and summary of workshop discussions
Results
Patient navigation has been shown to be effective at improving outcomes throughout the spectrum of cancer care. Work remains to develop consensus on scope of practice and evaluation criteria and to align payment incentives and policy.
Conclusion
Patient navigation plays an essential role in overcoming patient- and system-level barriers to improve access to cancer care and outcomes for those most in need.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to acknowledge the staff team of the National Cancer Policy Forum (Erin Balogh, Cyndi Trang, Natalie Lubin, and Sharyl Nass) for organizing the patient navigation workshop and spearheading this effort.
Funding source statement
No sources of funding were obtained for the preparation of this manuscript. The National Cancer Policy Forum workshop was supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Cancer Institute/National Institutes of Health, the American Association for Cancer Research, American Cancer Society, American College of Radiology, American Society of Clinical Oncology, American Society of Hematology, Association of American Cancer Institutes, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Cancer Support Community, CEO Roundtable on Cancer, Flatiron Health, Helsinn Therapeutics (USA), Inc., LIVESTRONG Foundation, Merck, National Comprehensive Cancer Network, Novartis Oncology, Oncology Nursing Society, and Pfizer Inc.
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Lopez, D., Pratt-Chapman, M.L., Rohan, E.A. et al. Establishing effective patient navigation programs in oncology. Support Care Cancer 27, 1985–1996 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00520-019-04739-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00520-019-04739-8