Navigators aid Oklahoma patients through medical maze
BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
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Published: October 26, 2009
Gwenda Lantz received a powerful affirmation of her career a couple of years ago.
She discovered that a man who was undergoing radiation chemotherapy at the
University of Oklahoma Cancer Institute was sleeping in his car at night. Lantz arranged for the man to stay at a local facility so he could be better rested for his ongoing battle against cancer.
Her career as a patient navigator had begun, and since then, she’s seen a buzzword turned into a growing standard of care.
Patient navigators and nurse navigators are becoming more common in Oklahoma’s hospitals, where they are helping patients with everything from parking to setting up doctors’ appointments to understanding the medical jargon of their diagnoses. When that diagnosis is cancer, a patient is often overwhelmed from the moment the words are spoken.
"Our goal is customer service, but more importantly, navigators are raising the standard of care for cancer in Oklahoma,” said
Tracie Anderson, clinical operations director at the University of Oklahoma Cancer Institute, which began using navigators two years ago.
"People are anxious when they receive a cancer diagnosis, and they need help navigating the process,” Anderson said.
Because 50 percent of the institute’s patients live 50 or more miles away, and 50 percent are underinsured or uninsured, a navigator’s duties sometimes extend to connecting people with financial resources and even finding someone who can care for their crops or cattle.
Some navigators get documentation, from X-rays to pathology reports, so that physicians don’t have to wait for information before treatment.
"If you have pancreatic cancer, a pathologist, radiologist, radiation therapist and others will come together to discuss your treatment,” Anderson said. "Ten doctors are better than one, and it’s important to do that before treatment. You never get a second chance for a first crack at treating cancer. If you radiate something, you can’t go back and radiate it again. So they talk first about whether it would be better to cut it out or use medication to treat it.”
Navigator teams are in place for gastrointestinal cancer, head and neck cancer, brain tumors and, most recently, lung cancer.
A recent study showed that missed appointments decreased.
For its research mission, the institute collected 50 percent more tissue samples for study in its first year with navigators.
Anderson said her goal is to have all navigators in place when the University of Oklahoma Cancer Institute facility is done next year. However, the positions are fundingdependent, she said.
Donations pay for the navigators, she said.
Mercy Hospital has two nurse navigators.
Lara Gaston, who meets with all cancer patients except those with breast cancer, said, "We help them with their anxiety and the mountains of information.”
Both Gaston and navigator Sandy Stockton are registered nurses.
Stockton meets with every newly diagnosed breast cancer patient.
"You really have to assess who they are,” Stockton said.
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