Trisha Torrey

Open Enrollment – Confusion Spells Opportunity

6 minutes of reading / Leave a Comment / By Trisha Torrey / October 30, 2017

What a MESS Open Enrollment is this year! No matter where your health insurance comes from – an employer, the Obamacare exchanges, or Medicare – it’s changed up, switched up, and more confusing than it has ever been. YOU, as an independent health or patient advocate or care manager live (and fight) in this world of “let’s make money from patients even if we have to deny the services they need” world. You know what it’s like having to get a treatment, or claim, or hospitalization approved for someone who has inadequate insurance coverage. You know what it’s like when […]

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SAFE! … or Maybe Not?

5 minutes of reading / Leave a Comment / By Trisha Torrey / October 23, 2017

Safety has been on my mind this week. It’s one of those concepts that, when related to patient advocacy and care management, can be applied in so many ways, with not so many easy answers. What kind of safety? Physical safety, of course. AND financial safety. Whose safety? Your clients’ safety, of course. AND yours. The questions aren’t so much about what is safe, or what isn’t. The questions are about judgment, timing, and consequences, and recognizing safety issues when the problems are obvious – vs – those times that are less obvious that we might miss all together –

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They’re Not Us. We’re Not Them. The Difference Is Defined by Consequences.

5 minutes of reading / 2 Comments / By Trisha Torrey / October 16, 2017

Those of us who stay on top of patient advocacy-related news got a jolt from this headline, “Patient Advocacy Groups Rake In Donations From Pharma.” Just the jolt itself suggests that a few clarifications need to be made about our work as independent, private patient advocates. This is a topic I have written about several times in the past, but because it has big ripple effects, and because some of the people you connect with may be confused, you’ll need to clarify for them, so it bears repeating. It’s about allegiance. And it’s classified in the same sphere of conversations

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Mr. Pareto, Mr. Juran, Mr. Koch, Garden Peas, and Your Care Management Practice

5 minutes of reading / 2 Comments / By Trisha Torrey / October 9, 2017

Chances are you’ve never heard of the three gentlemen named in today’s post title: Vilfredo Pareto, Joseph Juran, or Richard Koch. Nor can you imagine how they – and garden peas – relate to advocacy. Yet, the principle they have in common affects your work and ability to succeed, especially in the early days of your practice building. Unfortunately, most newly minted advocates not only don’t realize that, but they ignore it – at their peril. So what principle am I talking about? This post is intended to light a fire under you if who can’t figure out why you

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My Person! My People! Building Partnerships, Expanding Your Practice

5 minutes of reading / Leave a Comment / By Trisha Torrey / October 2, 2017

Are you a TV watcher? I am. Big time. I love TV. And because of that, more often than I care to admit, I draw inspiration from TV shows and characters. (As a side confession here, we’ve been binge-watching The West Wing, and have found that comparing it to today’s presidential politics is like marrying whiplash to an out-of-body experience. Right? But I digress….) Today we’re going to draw inspiration from three very different, very diverse TV personalities or characters: weatherman Al Roker from the Today Show, Elmo from Sesame Street, and Meredith Gray of Gray’s Anatomy. Stay tuned… we’ll

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What Do You Believe? Why? A Marketing Proposition

5 minutes of reading / Leave a Comment / By Trisha Torrey / September 26, 2017

What do you do for a living? What sort of business do you run? That’s a classic business question, and those who understand marketing and PR, and have been in business during the last decade, might respond to the questions with their “elevator pitch.” If you’re not familiar with that term “elevator pitch”, you should be. An elevator pitch is a 10-20 second (yes, second!) overview of your business, so-named because you should be able to deliver it to a fellow passenger in the time it takes you to share an elevator ride to the top floor of a not-very-tall

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Wind, Rain, Destruction – and Metaphors

5 minutes of reading / 2 Comments / By Trisha Torrey / September 10, 2017

APHA members received a note from us this week with some expectation management. That is… we’re prepared, and are hunkering down, for Hurricane Irma. Our offices, located in Central Florida, will likely lose power over the next few days as Irma makes her way through; meaning, of course, that office communication may come to a standstill until power is restored. Honestly – it’s like knowing you’re about to get a tooth pulled. There’s pain before, you know there will be pain after, and you’re just waiting for it to be over with so you can get on with life, but

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