The Northwell Health Cancer Institute has established Cancer Care Direct, a comprehensive program to connect patients with clinical registered nurse navigators who can provide expert guidance to patients and caregivers from diagnosis to treatment to survivorship.
The program will be offered at Northwell’s 10 cancer centers in communities across Long Island, Queens, Manhattan, Staten Island, and Westchester.
“As an integrated health system, Northwell’s Cancer Care Direct program can truly navigate patients through the entire continuum of cancer care and other medical disciplines,” Richard Barakat, physician-in-chief and director of the Northwell Health Cancer Institute, and senior vice president of cancer services, said in a statement.
In January 2023, Northwell Health Cancer Institute piloted Cancer Care Direct to its 83,000 employees across its health system, offering staff and their family members access to nurse navigators. The Northwell Cancer Care Direct navigation program provides expert guidance in nearly every type of cancer. Within the first two months, Cancer Care Direct received over 100 referrals.
At Cancer Care Direct, nurse navigators guide care so that patients can focus on their healing. Personalized services they provide include: securing timely appointments for all specialties as well as imaging appointments; attending doctor’s appointments or arranging telehealth visits; helping with paperwork, connecting patients to clinical trials, assessment for pain management; palliative care; social work; physical therapy; behavioral health and accessing support services such as nutrition counseling, financial resources, transportation and survivorship programs.
A review of 29 patient navigation studies showed that patient navigation reduced the time to diagnosis and treatment, improved treatment adherence, improved patient quality of life, improved patient knowledge regarding their cancer, and helped improve their communication with their health care team.
Prior to creating Cancer Care Direct, the institute offered navigation to breast cancer patients in January 2022, said Rita Mercieca, senior vice president and chief administrator at the Northwell Health Cancer Institute. The breast navigation program demonstrated the need to replicate this type of service for patients being treated in all cancer specialties: 500 patients were navigated in the first year.
Over the months, Mercieca and her team worked with chairs of cancer departments, physicians and others to develop the program. Currently, 10 dedicated nurse navigators are on staff, who speak five languages to focus on key patient populations across the region. Those include: English, Spanish, Mandarin, Bengali, Vietnamese, with a language interpreter service available for others.
Since early 2022, nurse navigators have helped over 1,200 patients in various cancer specialties.
