Improving timeliness of care for breast, GYN, and aerodigestive cancer patients with nurse navigators in a safety net hospital.

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183 Background: The Georgia Cancer Center for Excellence (GCCE) at Grady received a 5-year MERCK Patient Centered Grant in 2017 that focuses on improving care to vulnerable cancer patients (pts) through the introduction of nurse (RN) navigators, a dietician and a part time exercise coach. A review of the literature shows improved patient outcomes and satisfaction with decreased time to treatment for breast and lung cancer pts. [1-2] RN navigation has been shown to expedite care and one of our goals for the MERCK grant was to study the effect of introducing RN navigation in a safety net hospital for three cancer sites. Methods: Three RN navigators were hired for the Breast, GYN and Aerodigestive cancer programs since 2017. RN navigators meet all newly diagnosed cancer pts during clinic and track their progression of care, often intervening for timeliness of work up and treatment. Each RN navigator keeps a record of pts navigated. An audit of this prospectively collected data measuring time from diagnosis to treatment for breast, GYN and aerodigestive cancer pts took place for 2018 and 2019. Inclusion criteria: diagnosed and treated at Grady, navigated by RN, and not Stage IV disease. Results: The total numbers of cancer pts navigated over the past two years were 244 breast, 131 GYN, and 265 aerodigestive pts. Using the inclusion criteria described in the methods section, the time from diagnosis to treatment decreased for these three cancer sites (see Table). Conclusions: Implementation of RN navigators within the cancer program trended towards decreases in time from diagnosis to treatment for our breast, GYN, and aerodigestive cancer patients. These measurable improvements over three cancer sites are largely attributed to RN navigation and suggest that cancer outcomes will improve over time for our patients treated in our safety net hospital. We plan to study patients who were retained in the system or were adherent to care to better understand the importance of RN navigation in our system.