Will is a patient navigator at The Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center at Jefferson Health in Philadelphia. We sat down with him to hear a little more about what he’s passionate about and how he’s using Roundtrip in his everyday work.
How long have you been working as a patient navigator?
I’ve been a patient navigator for the past four months, so I’m fairly new to the position. This is actually a fairly new program; the program started about a year and a half ago with my supervisor Caryn Vadseth. It’s been a great opportunity to reach out to patients and to assist them beyond the appointment.
I’ve been at Jefferson for a little over five years. I was originally a front-desk coordinator. In that position you still had to address barriers that you see with the patients that the doctors didn’t necessarily know about. That’s actually how we got connected to Roundtrip.
What do you enjoy most about your job/what are you most passionate about?
The fact that we’re able to make a difference in someone’s life so quickly is just so rewarding. Helping people get the resources they need to access care is so important, especially through providing transportation. A lot of people think that Jefferson is a small campus, but it can be difficult to find where you need to go.
At my job, I’m most passionate about helping patients so I really think one of the best parts of my job is seeing where we can provide solutions to address gaps in care. Communication with the community has been a goal for us at Jefferson since before I even stepped into this role. Having this role, I actually have the freedom to look into that. One of the benefits of being in my position is that I get to reach out to the community. We get to empower patients to reach out on their own, but we also get to guide them as well. Some patients aren’t aware of some of the resources that we have access to. Not only do we have the opportunity to step in and help make sure patients can get to their appointments, we have the opportunity to help make sure they access things like shopping for groceries. We have the ability to help patients spread their wings a little and make sure they can enjoy a higher quality of life.
How do you use Roundtrip?
To facilitate transportation we have parameters that we set as far as just coverage for a ride, but we use Roundtrip to facilitate timeliness. It’s a great commodity to be able to use Roundtrip and it’s full range of options for patient needs.
What’s one of your favorite stories working with a patient?
I actually share this story a lot! We have a patient that’s legally blind. I met him through a connection of mine who I helped with transportation, and this patient in particular had a transportation issue. I met him down on the street and helped him out because he was having trouble with the cab driver. It turned out that he needed to go in and get the cab voucher, and we ended up getting him sorted out.
But after that, I remembered that his story just kind of stuck out to me. We got together to have a conversation and got to know each other. I found out that he was newly blind, he was from out of town, and he more appointments to get to at Jefferson because he also had cancer. I had the opportunity to help connect him to the services that he needed in order to navigate his way to his appointments and I just remember him being so holistically happy with his experience. That overall abundance of love and care that he received during his treatment was just so impactful, and he wasn’t even expecting it. So, long story short, that’s my favorite story.