Navigation Services
What is a Community Health Worker?
Gateway to Care uses the term Health Service Systems Navigator [Navigator] to describe this function to our diverse community. Navigators help people find and understand how to use a Health Home and their role in the management of their health.
A Health Home is defined as:
the person or place an individual chooses for accessing health promotion, prevention and primary care on a continuing basis.
The attributes of a Health Home are:
- Facilitates access to preventative, primary care, and specialty care
- Client/provider collaboration
- Health and social services coordination
- Referrals
- Follow-up
- Monitoring
Navigators perform a combination of services associated with case management such as outreach, eligibility determination, health promotion, referral, advocacy, and facilitation of service coordination. Navigators increase access to healthcare by providing cultural linkages between communities and healthcare providers. Navigators reduce the cost of healthcare by helping people obtain healthcare services at the lowest level of care, improving quality of care through services that promote health and prevent disease, and enable better communication between patient and provider.
The goal of the Gateway to Care Health Service Systems Navigator Program is to help people access healthcare at the appropriate level. Navigators will:
- educate people about options of healthcare access
- assist people to identify a Health Home
- assist people to obtain social services and other community resources
- educate people on the value of a Health Home, and
- assist in the development of family preventive healthcare plans
