Patient Navigation

We train about 206 students to serve as patient navigators each year to provide longitudinal follow-up for patients after each fair. Patient navigators follow patients who meet certain “high-risk” criteria for three months in order to assist them with acquiring health insurance and appointments with physicians at either Jackson Memorial Hospital or local free or low-cost clinics throughout South Florida. The goal of this project is to ensure that patients who attend our fairs are accessing the healthcare system throughout the year, so they can receive the necessary long-term medical care. Additionally, this year, we trained navigators to help patients from the Jackson Emergency Department and trained MS1 students to begin navigation as a portion of their curriculum.

In total, we helped 163 patients from the health fairs with Patient Navigators, 44 patients with MS1s in their curriculum, and 14 patients from the Jackson Emergency Department. Next year, we hope to focus on quality improvement within our patient navigation program. We plan on reaching out to patients who have been navigated within the last two years and asking them about their experience to identify points of improvement within our current navigation system. We also want to assess whether or not they were able to achieve their health care goals through our navigation program.