Define care coordination and patient navigation; what nursing competencies are essential for effective coordination?

• A. Care coordination aligns services across providers and settings; patient navigation guides patients through barriers; essential competencies: communication, critical thinking, health literacy, and advocacy.
• B. Care coordination focuses on scheduling appointments; patient navigation is about transportation.
• C. Care coordination is the responsibility of case managers only; patient navigation does not involve health literacy.
• D. Care coordination is about reducing costs by minimizing services; patient navigation is a form of financial assistance.

Answer: (C)

Care coordination means weaving together services across different providers and settings so the patient experiences a seamless, continuous path of care. Patient navigation focuses on helping patients move through barriers—financial, transportation, language, health literacy, and system complexity—to access and follow through with care. Nursing competencies central to effective coordination include strong communication to share plans clearly among the care team and with patients, critical thinking to anticipate problems and prevent gaps, and health literacy and cultural competence to tailor information to the patient’s needs. Advocacy is also essential, ensuring the patient’s preferences and resources are considered, along with collaboration with an interprofessional team, knowledge of community resources, and the use of informatics to track referrals and follow-ups. In practice, a nurse coordinating care after a hospitalization would align medications, arrange follow-up appointments, and organize home or community supports while identifying and addressing barriers like transportation or cost. Limiting care coordination to scheduling, assigning it only to case managers, or focusing solely on cost misses the broader goal of delivering integrated, accessible, patient-centered care through active patient navigation.