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.