Nurse Navigation Services
Specialty & Advanced Therapy Patient Navigation
Exceptional clinical care on behalf of sub-specialized medical practices aimed at keeping patients on their clinical pathway for better outcomes and increased patient satisfaction.
Why is a Nurse Navigation Program Needed?
For patients dealing with complex medical conditions significantly impacting quality of life, care pathways can be frustrating, confusing, and hard to understand what to expect. Patients often need to coordinate between multiple care providers, facilities, and treatment plans. Nurse navigators help guide patients through this complexity, ensuring they receive the appropriate access to care and are an active participant in their care pathway.
What Challenges Does Nurse Navigation Help To Address?
High Patient Attrition
Patients that drop off the care pathway or cancelled procedures directly translate into lost revenue for healthcare practices or medical groups. This can be from patients that fail to adhere to a care plan or dropout from discouragement.
Physician’s Time
In a time when reimbursements are not keeping pace with the cost of performing care, it’s important that a physician’s time is used where it matters most - doing procedures. A navigator can easily help address simple clinic “bottlenecks” such as med change patients.
Patient Education
Many patients lack health literacy or struggle to understand their diagnoses, treatment options, and care plans. Nurse navigators provide essential education and emotional support, helping patients make informed decisions about their healthcare.
Patient Satisfaction
When navigators are effectively utilized there is a direct correlation with increased patient satisfaction.
Where Can Internal Navigation Programs Go Wrong?
It’s all too common for C-Suite, Administrators or physicians to think that because they have a navigator, they check the box. When in reality, this can be a major obstacle for their practice to realize the incredible clinical and financial outcomes with a navigation program is implemented properly.
Lack of Focus on High Value Patients
It is all too common for internal Navigators to get pulled to other responsibilities and/or disease states. This can erode away at execution of care pathways more valuable to your practice.
Turnover and Retention
The moment turnover happens, this disrupts the efficiency of your care pathway and its associated revenue generation. Patients end up not being navigated, translating into lost opportunity. In addition, many groups are unable to find and hire highly-trained and reliable navigators. These recruitment efforts cost time and money This can cause frustration from both providers and the patient.
Poor Training
Bringing on new personnel takes time. Time is money considering patients sitting there not being navigated. It also involves the cost of internal resources from administration and providers to get them up to speed. This assumes they are trained on industry best-practices. If the navigator is not trained well, there can be several missed opportunities for effective pathway movement that will hurt the practice over a long period of time without them even knowing it.
No Program Oversight
Navigators can be working hard, but is it leading to positive movement in key performance indicators for your practice? When there is a lack of administrative bandwidth to oversee navigation programs, the clinical and financial outcomes intended for navigation may not materialize.
Using the Wrong Tools
Unfamiliarity with tools such as analytics platforms can create obstacles to assess progress and calibrate workflows as needed to ensure program success. It can also be common for practices to be using ineffective pathways, touchpoints and scripts.
Why External Navigation with NNS Makes Sense
Clinics often lack the time, tools, or training to move diagnosed patients effectively.
NNS solves this by optimizing and managing the entire care pathway and process for you. How?
High Performing Navigation
- Sustained long term performance
- Proven pathway movement results
- Keep your ASC’s surgery schedule full
Consistency
- No opportunity to be pulled into clinic staffing
- Disease and specialty specific focus for navigators
- No turnover and/or rehiring costs
- No managing sickness, vacations
Highly Trained
- Industry best-practices
- No learning curve
Productivity
- Technology for efficient and scalable patient volumes
- Schedule monitoring
- More effective use of office visits
- Tight call schedule/follow up
Full Program and Administrative Oversight
- Assess progress
- Calibrate workflows
- Expert data filtering and analytics monitoring
- Quarterly reporting
Many satisfied clients have achieved best-in-class care pathway movement without the hassle, disruption and lost revenue. Take your first step towards maximizing your financial and clinical outcomes by calling NNS at (704) 385-1740.