Community health workers link you to resources and medical providers.
A navigator can answer questions, find out what programs can meet your needs, help create a care plan that is right for you, and coordinate support and human services.
The navigator helps determine needs based on chronic conditions, substance use, insurance, and/or other risk factors.
Navigators can:
- Help you sign up for medical insurance
- Guide you through the healthcare system
- Provide contact information for local resources (clothing, housing, food, transportation, legal aid, jobs, etc.)
- Speak on your behalf to ensure care
- Help plan continual care by communicating with providers
- Help you understand medical conditions
- Coach you in communicating with others
- Help arrange medical transportation
Navigators cannot:
- Offer counseling
- Give medical advice
- Make choices for you
- Perform medical exams
- Give non-medical transportation
- Make appointments for you
Learn about a day in the life of a community health worker.
Community health workers are part of a larger collaborative. The Medicaid Innovation Collaborative.
Medicaid Innovation Collaborative
MEDICAID INNOVATION COLLABORATIVE: Medicaid patients, Federally Qualified Health Centers, community based organizations and OSF OnCall Digital Health will partner together to transform Medicaid delivery in Illinois by improving quality, increasing access, and addressing health disparities.
ENGAGEMENT: We will build engagement through continuous listening and feedback, flexibility and agility based on neighborhood and community needs and build trust by being always available.
INFRASTRUCTURE: We will build technology platforms, use frictionless integration, predictive analytics, community health worker workforce training, and mobile technology vans.
DIGITAL CLINICAL CARE: We will utilize chronic disease management, digital wrap-around services (remote patient monitoring), deploy digital behavioral health services and digital prenatal and postpartum care programs, cancer screenings and virtual care 24/7/365.
