Trisha Torrey

Fashionistas! What Hats Does an Advocate Wear?

5 minutes of reading / 1 Comment / By Trisha Torrey / February 19, 2018

I played golf the other day with a group of women I didn’t know well. I came away from the round being less pleased with my golf game (I really can’t putt!), but much pleased with the conversation and its application for our health and patient advocacy profession. In fact, I was so pleased with it, I went home and recorded notes so I could remember the conversation to share with you. The ladies I played with were very curious about advocates. They all had healthcare horror stories to share. One had recently been through some bad medical experiences with […]

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The Biggest Risk in Life: Are You Living the Life You Want to Live?

5 minutes of reading / 1 Comment / By Trisha Torrey / February 12, 2018

A few days ago, I heard from Beatrice (not her real name), an APHA member who has been successfully running her patient advocacy practice for several years. We met a few years ago when she and her husband attended APHA workshops. I’ve been impressed ever since with their go-getter attitudes and their ability to create the business they wanted to have. Until this week. Beatrice, a young advocate by our typical demographics (I’m guessing her age here… maybe late 40s? possibly 50) wrote to tell me she had suffered a heart attack in December. Yes. Really.

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What You Should Know, But Haven’t Asked, about Patient Advocate Certification (And what does Goldilocks have to do with it?)

6 minutes of reading / 2 Comments / By Trisha Torrey / February 5, 2018

There was big excitement last week as the launch for the first Patient Advocate Certification exam took place. From the massive email that went out on January 31 (1700+ people!) to the most-attended-ever APHA Expert Call-in called “Ask the PACB: Prep for the First Exam” – it’s clear there is huge interest in certification for our relatively new profession of health and patient advocacy. And that’s for good reason! As more and more people consider advocacy as a profession, it becomes imperative to identify, develop, and maintain the important standards and ethics required to keep the profession highly elevated and

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The Last Four Myths About Starting an Independent Advocacy Practice

5 minutes of reading / Leave a Comment / By Trisha Torrey / January 29, 2018

This is week 3 of our series, and includes the final four myths about starting, building, and growing an independent patient advocacy or care management practice. Week 1 (Myths 1, 2, and 3) is found here. Week 2 (Myths 4, 5, and 6) is found here. To remind you, these myths are based on the comments I’ve heard from advocates who (I’m sorry to say) failed at getting a practice started, not because they don’t know how to be good advocates (they do!) but because they tried to get started despite their misconceptions about what it would be like to

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3 More Myths About Building a Successful Independent Advocacy Practice

7 minutes of reading / Leave a Comment / By Trisha Torrey / January 22, 2018

We began last week with this series of myths about starting, building, and growing an independent patient advocacy or care management practice. As a reminder, these myths are based on the comments I’ve heard from advocates who just couldn’t get a practice going – who (sad to say) failed – not because they don’t know how to be good advocates (they do!) but because they tried to get started despite their misconceptions about what it would be like to do so. This week we have three more of those myths for you to consider, in hopes these misconceptions aren’t yours.

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3 Myths About Building an Independent Advocacy Practice

6 minutes of reading / 1 Comment / By Trisha Torrey / January 15, 2018

The real shame of this new series of posts is that it’s the result of feedback from people who gave up on their dreams of starting and growing independent, private advocacy practices. The further shame is that all those patients who they might have helped will not get their help, and may never get what they need from the healthcare system. Over the years, hundreds of people have come and gone in our profession. My educated guess: for every 10 who take the early steps toward fulfilling their dreams, only 2 or 3 have succeeded. Further, the people one might

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The Patient Advocate’s Version of “Time’s Up!”

4 minutes of reading / 1 Comment / By Trisha Torrey / January 8, 2018

It’s no surprise to any of us women who work for a living that sexual harassment and violence have been part of the fabric of our workplaces for our entire careers. With few exceptions, we have all had our “Me Too” experiences to one degree or another. And it doesn’t take more than a few seconds for our brains to take us back there to the anger, frustration, fear, and embarrassment we felt at the time. While my intent is not to co-opt the Time’s Up Movement for women in the workplace, I cannot pass up the opportunity to point

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