A Wall Street Journal article (August 16, 2011) describes the role of a nurse navigator to assist patients from start of the diagnosis through completion of treatment. The nurse navigator starts with the patient right from initial diagnosis (in one of the examples presented – breast cancer) to surgery scheduling that synchronized with the patient’s availability, to follow up surgery, to treatment choices, advice on follow up and support through the entire process.  Such customer service managers, while common in other manufacturing contexts, seem to permit improved customer satisfaction in a decentralize health care supply chain.  Given that the service provided by the nurse navigator is an externality that benefits the entire supply chain, who should pay for such services ? Will the nurse navigator evolve like concierge services offered by hotels, and thus permit overall health care service satisfaction based on willingness to pay ?  Should Federal programs start to cover the cost of the nurse navigator, and if so, how would such services generate cost efficiencies ?