The Financial Navigation Program is administered by Patient Advocate Foundation (“PAF”) in partnership with Cincinnati Cancer Advisors. The Financial Navigation Program provides one-on-one assistance with a professional case manager to help qualified patients and caregivers resolve financial, job-related, and healthcare access issues that may be the result of a patient’s cancer diagnosis. In order to qualify for case management assistance, the patient must have a cancer diagnosis and under the care of a physician and referred by Cincinnati Cancer Advisors. The Financial Navigation Program provides assistance with resolving a broad variety of patient and caregiver concerns including: (1) access to care (e.g., assistance in obtaining prior authorization approvals; second opinions, insurance appeals; insurance plan review); (2) cost of care (e.g., co-pay assistance, premium assistance); (3) cost of living expenses (e.g., rent, utility, transportation, food/nutrition assistance programs);(4) safety net program support (e.g. SSDI, LIS, Extra Help enrollment assistance) and (5) employment-related issues (e.g., FMLA, short-term and long-term disability). The Financial Navigation Program identifies sources of assistance, including other charitable organizations and government-sponsored programs, and assists patients in enrolling in these services as appropriate.

PAF will not consider the identity of any physician, provider, supplier of items or services, donor, drug therapy, services or supplies being utilized, or the referral source when assessing whether an applicant is qualified for assistance through The Financial Navigation Program. Further, assistance through the Financial Navigation Program is not dependent on the use of a particular drug, particular supplies, or particular provider or suppliers and patients are free to switch drug therapies, treating physicians, pharmacies, and suppliers at any time without affecting their continued eligibility for assistance from PAF.

Qualifying patients are provided one-on-one assistance by the Financial Navigation Program until their access to care, cost of care, cost of living, or employment-related issues are resolved. Assistance is provided to the extent the Financial Navigation Program has capacity to provide assistance with no preference being given to any one referral source.

Information Collection, Use, Disclosure Ownership and Sharing
Patient Advocate Foundation is committed to ensuring patient’s privacy is protected. It is the policy of Patient Advocate Foundation that patients’ individually identifiable information, including protected health information, collected from patients, or their authorized representatives, in the course of PAF providing assistance through the Financial Navigation program, as well as all other foundation programs, may only be used after authorization by patients, or their representatives, as follows:
1. By PAF and its representatives to provide services and support to patients seeking assistance from and enrolled in PAF programs, including those administered by PAF as a service provider or program partner, to respond to applications for assistance, resolve issues presented by patients seeking assistance from PAF and to evaluate the effectiveness of the Financial Navigation Program.
2. Representatives may include PAF employees, both permanent and temporary, directors, officers, PAF legal counsel, contracted third party service provider organizations, specific contacts within organizations contracting PAF as a program administrator and specific contacts within organizations partnering with PAF to provide the Financial Navigation Program.
3. Patients’ contact information may be used in the future to share printed and/or electronic communications from Patient Advocate Foundation and The Cincinnati Cancer Advisors. If the patient does not wish to receive print and/or electronic communications from PAF or the Cincinnati Cancer Advisors, he/she may contact the program at 1-866-951-7505  and request to have his/her contact information removed from the mailing list.
4. Patients’ data may also be used in de-identified aggregated reports. This means that information patients provide to the Financial Navigation Program may be combined with other patients’ data to prepare reports analyzing patient needs and the effectiveness of the Financial Navigation Program. PAF will only use de-identified patient data, i.e., patient data where all identifying data terms like the patient’s name, identifying numbers, etc. have been removed in these aggregated reports.
5. PAF is the owner of the personal information collected through PAF programs, including the Financial Navigation Program, PAF may provide de-identified reports to the Cincinnati Cancer Advisors. In addition, PAF may share individually identifiable information with the Cincinnati Cancer Advisors, including contact information and acknowledgement of receipt of services from the Financial Navigation Program for the purposes of data analysis regarding the impact of the Financial Navigation Program.
6. PAF collects information that patients voluntarily provide or that is given to us by patients’ authorized representatives and providers, including but not limited to family members, caregivers, guardians, medical providers, pharmacies, health care facilities, diagnostic laboratories, medical equipment providers, health and welfare benefit plans, insurance companies, benefit administrators and employers.
7. PAF will not sell or rent patients’ individually identifiable information, including protected health information, to anyone.
8. PAF will not share personal information with any third party outside of the organization other than as necessary to resolve issues presented by the patients, to process an application for assistance, to process a claim being made against a financial award that has been provided, to evaluate the effectiveness of the Financial Navigation Program, as required by a partnering organization, for PAF operations/management or as is required by law.
To learn more about PAF’s Patient Privacy Policy, visit our website at https://www.patientadvocate.org/patient-privacy to view the full policy.