Care Navigation

Care Navigation can play a vital role in the signposting of patients to the right services at the right time. In other parts of the country the Care Navigation role is already well established and through the linking to a Directory of Services have been found to save GP time at scale and been popular with patients as well. Furthermore assisting patients to manage their own health through harnessing both innovation and technology is referenced in the ‘’Next Steps on NHS Five Year Forward View’’

Originally, East Lancashire CCG Primary Care Team commissioned the development of tailor-made directories of services to hold details of each service for which a patient may be navigated to and also be easily aligned to the models of extended primary care access. These directories were made available through websites, which Rossendale Community Directory is a REAL legacy of.

A process of care navigation combined with a reliable directory of service will allow reception/care navigator staff the ability to provide patients with more information about local health and wellbeing services, within and outside of primary care in a safe, effective way.

Care navigation offers the patient ‘choice not triage’ to access the most appropriate service first which as we know isn’t always the GP.