Comprehensive Cancer Care Navigation: Improving Patient Outcomes
October 3, 2025Dr. Kamal Golla, Evolent’s vice president of clinical technologies and performance, joined the Empowered Patient Podcast to talk about the value of care navigation for people with cancer. He explains how care navigation helps people not only take on their medical care, but also to address the logistical, emotional and financial challenges that are common in life with cancer. He discusses how care navigation is evolving, as digital technology advances and as more types of cancer have become more like chronic conditions.
Topics covered in this episode:
- 0:33 – Defining cancer care navigation and understanding the role of navigators
- 1:42 – The importance of personalizing care navigation to the individual patient
- 3:17 – How more types of cancer are more like chronic disease, and the impacts of that trend on the challenges that patients face and the support they need
- 5:12 – The challenges of financial toxicity in a world of increasingly high-cost therapies
- 6:13 – The risks of depression, anxiety and other psychosocial distress for people with cancer and their impact on clinical outcomes
- 7:35 – Managing side effects that mostly occur outside the clinical setting, both during active treatment and survivorship
- 10:03 – How care navigators serve as an extension of the patient’s care team
- 12:15 – How Careology, a cancer care management platform, supports patients and caregivers while providing insights to the care team
- 15:01 – Dr. Golla’s vision for the evolution of care navigation into a more adaptive “precision navigation” model, with the help of AI