advocate best practices

Looking Beyond the Headlines Can Improve Your Recognition

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reading the headlines

Here we are, rounding the corner into 2021, heaving a sigh of relief that 2020 is behind us, and contemplating how we can improve our outcomes – in particular our business outcomes – in this new year. I have a suggestion for you that can help you achieve that! My suggestion begins with the fact that most of us take at least a glance at the headlines every day. Some of us more news-junkie types take more than a brief glance. So if keeping up with the news is something we’re already doing every day anyway, why not put that …

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Success in 2020 Meant Finding Our Relocated Cheese

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mouse and cheese

2020 has been a year for the books, right? Few, if any, health and patient advocates or care managers will tell you that 2020 has been a good business year, much less a good year personally. But those of you who know me and my thought process, know that I like to look at every challenge as an opportunity.  And with that in mind, it’s a good opportunity to point out the important lesson that those who have survived 2020 in business have learned: We have learned what to do when someone moves our cheese.   So if you are scratching …

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What Aretha Franklin Can Teach Us About Communication

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r-e-s-p-e-c-t

This post asks the question: Under what circumstances do we go to the wall for our patient-clients? And when we need to go there, what’s the best approach? Scenario: Your patient-client checks in for a medical appointment and the receptionist is rude during the process. Do you say or do anything? And if so – how and what?  Scenario: As you sit by your patient’s hospital bedside, a nurse comes in to change a dressing already wearing gloves. You ask her to wash her hands and put on new gloves and she cops an attitude. Do you insist? And if …

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All That – But Missing Your Bag of Chips?

5 minutes of reading / 2 Comments / By

Over the years, I’ve met, discussed, emailed, pleaded, and thrown my hands up at (probably) hundreds of advocates who have never truly become professional, independent, practicing advocates. They might have told you they were/are advocates. They SAID they were in business. But their efforts were half-hearted. They didn’t ever ACTIVELY go into business. Instead they joined an organization, or set up a website, or printed business cards, or told their friends they were in business… they might even have listed themselves in a directory or two… But it was all very half-hearted. Why? Because of that idea that they weren’t …

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Employers as Clients – Pushing the Right Buttons and Avoiding Landmines, Too

5 minutes of reading / 1 Comment / By
employee benefits button

One great idea for marketing our advocacy services and acquiring new clients is to reach out to employers to encourage them to hire us on behalf of their employees. When done well, and right, it can be a win-win-win situation for all involved, and in the end, the patient-client-employee feels extremely well served. Seems pretty simple, right? Well, maybe not so… Many independent advocates have attempted such outreach in the past, only to be met with brick walls and great frustration. I think they just didn’t have enough knowledge about the HOW and the WHY. So that’s a bit of …

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When It’s Time to Use IDK

4 minutes of reading / 1 Comment / By
time out

No one can ever be expected to know everything about everything at the moment they need to know it. Yet, if there’s one thing I’ve learned about medical providers – and too many health advocates, too – it is that there is a major reluctance to say “I don’t know.” It’s as if the fact that they don’t know something reflects on their ability to be useful. As if they are “less” because the answer isn’t right there in the front of their brains and rolling off their tongues. I just don’t think that’s right, or fair, or kosher. Whether …

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Beware Those Wolves in Sheeps’ Clothing

6 minutes of reading / 5 Comments / By
wof in sheeps clothing

This post was originally published in July 2013, and was updated in July 2020. Two unrelated stories have crossed my path, but their bottom lines are the same. It’s too easy to be fooled. Story #1: … is based on a scathing article from the Wall Street Journal about the amount of money medical device companies pay to the doctors who use their products. The story is mostly focused on investigations from the Justice Department starting with one doctor who lived and worked in California, Dr. Aria Sabit, who insisted on using certain spinal implant products because he owns part …

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