BOWF is excited to provide Patient Outreach Navigation in addition to screening services.  Patient Outreach Navigation is a patient support service in which patients are guided by health care professionals upon a diagnosis of breast cancer.

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Often, patients face gaps in service as well as fragmented care. This occurs because not all care resources come from one central place making it difficult for patients to know what is really available to them. For those who do not speak English, the challenge is greater. Patients who have navigation show improved results due to improved access to cancer screenings and treatment care.

Patient Navigation

The program ensures all patients with potential findings of cancer receive navigation services on:

• Early Detection Screenings
• Cancer Education
• Resource Education
• Research Education

Navigators assist patients by offering a broad array of services which include:

• Help with scheduling appointments
  
• Arranging follow-up care
• Coordinating and streamlining insurance paperwork
• Identifying local resources and other appropriate support
• Help for identifying and obtaining elder/ child care or transportation

Benefits

Increasingly, outreach navigation development and implementation is spreading across the country. Pilot programs show results that support the practice of patient navigation programs.

Navigated patients:

• Were more likely to obtain recommended breast biopsies  - ( 85.7% of navigated patients compared with 56.6% of non-navigated patients)

• Had their biopsies completed in a more timely fashion -(71.4% of biopsies were completed before 4 weeks compared with 38.5% of non-navigated patients)

• Showed improvements in the stage of breast cancer first diagnosed

• Showed increased 5-year survival rates