ED navigators connect patients to better venues of care.

Presbyterian Healthcare Services (PHS) in Albuquerque, NM, has implemented an ED navigator program designed to redirect patients with non-emergent cases to more appropriate and less expensive venues of care. Providers determine whether patients should be navigated during the medical screening exam, and then personnel with customer-service backgrounds set up appointments for these patients to be seen within 12 to 24 hours.The long-term goal of the program is to educate consumers to seek care for non-emergent conditions in the most appropriate setting to begin with, and early indications are that the approach is working. The program is consistently navigating 12% to 14% of ED patients to less acute settings, but administrators believe there is more opportunity yet to be realized. Only 3% of patients who have been navigated have returned to the ED for non-emergent care, and if this trend continues, administrators anticipate the program will produce cost reductions in the next three to six months. The biggest hurdle in implementing an ED navigator program is obtaining buy-in from emergency physicians because they're the ones who determine whether a patient will be navigated.