Assessing the impact of a health navigator on improving access to care and addressing the social needs of palliative care patients experiencing homelessness: A service evaluation

Health navigators are healthcare professionals who specialize in care coordination, case management, navigating transitions, and reducing barriers to care. There is limited literature on the impact of health navigators on community-based palliative care for people experiencing homelessness. We devised key performance indicators in nine categories with the aim to quantify the impact of a health navigator on the delivery of palliative care to patients experiencing homelessness. Data were collected prospectively for all patient encounters involving a health navigator from July 2020 to 2021 and reviewed to determine the distribution of the health navigator’s role and the ways in which patient care was impacted. This study was conducted in Toronto, Ontario with the Palliative Education and Care for the Homeless (PEACH) Program. At any one time, the PEACH health navigator served a total of 50 patients. We identified five key areas of the health navigator role including (1) facilitating access (2) coordinating care (3) addressing social determinants of health (4) advocating for patients, and (5) counselling patients and loved ones. The health navigator role was split evenly between activities pertaining to palliative care for structurally vulnerable populations and community-based palliative care for the general population. To achieve high impact outcomes, a considerable investment of time and energy was required of the health navigator, speaking to the importance of adequate and sustainable funding. These findings underscore the potential for health navigators to add value to community-based palliative care teams, especially those caring for structurally vulnerable populations.