A study in Pennsylvania says that nonclinician “patient navigators” reduced nonemergency hospital emergency-room use by 43 percent and cut by 60 percent the 30-day readmissions for targeted diagnosis-related groups. This means that they can save hospitals a lot of money in new Medicare regulation fines.
Further, the study noted, the patient navigators for non-clinical tasks freed up more time to physicians and other clinicians to focus on tasks that more specifically required their medical expertise.