WASHINGTON D.C. – July 20, 2023 – Yesterday, First Lady Dr. Jill Biden held a call with cancer advocacy organizations to discuss the administration’s commitment to increase access to patient navigation services through reimbursement in Medicare. The American Cancer Society (ACS) and the ACS National Navigation Roundtable commit to playing a leading role in training and certification standards that will allow access to and coverage of patient oncology navigation services being proposed in the 2024 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule.
The American Cancer Society has long focused on patient navigation as an evidence-based intervention that can significantly reduce barriers and support cancer patients and their families in managing a cancer diagnosis. We are committed to playing a critical role in ensuring navigators get the training and certification needed so this essential support can be more widely accessed as a covered service.
Prioritizing patient navigation is particularly important to achieve the President’s Cancer Moonshot goals of cancer health equity, as the greatest impact of professional navigators is often addressing the needs of under-resourced or marginalized communities.
The American Cancer Society and the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network support the administration pursuing this critical first step to further the availability of patient navigation services and strongly encourage Congress to continue to build on this administrative action to seek additional funding approaches to further expand access to patient navigation services, making them widely available to reduce existing barriers to prevent, detect, treat and survive cancer.