The role of nurses in patient navigation has evolved through hospital nursing functions of utilization review and utilization management with a broad healthcare system view to those in case management who worked directly with healthcare teams caring for specific patient populations. As case managers stayed in-house, nurse navigators followed the shift of outpatient oncology care in the early 2000s. Given the complexity of cancer care and challenges to obtaining care, the nurse navigator is the crucial eyes on the patient from the access point of care through delivery of care and then discharged into follow-up and survivorship care.
