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When Passion and Reality Collide

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Over the years, I have connected with thousands of people who intend to become independent health advocates and care managers, and 99.9% of them have one thing in common: their choice of health advocacy as a career is a result of their passion for helping others. They are caring individuals with skills for navigating some aspect of the healthcare system. They are empathetic, and those they will help recognize their empathy right away.They aren’t looking to make a fortune in business. Instead, much of their reward will come from knowing they have helped improve the quality of other people’s lives. […]

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The 2017 Advocates’ Challenges

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Since I started this blog, and as each new year begins, I try to think of ways to challenge advocate-readers (and advocate-wannabe-readers) with ways they can improve their work, their results for clients, and their businesses, too. This year, that task is so very simple. Unfortunately, that’s not the good news. Sadly, it’s more like the bad news. Bad news – because this year’s challenges all come from complaints and problems I’ve been asked to respond to – or even fix – in just the past few months. Oh how I dislike this part of my work! I hate dealing

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An Advocate’s Website Checklist

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As we close in on the end of the year, many of you are (or at least should be) in the process of reviewing your marketing plans in preparation for the new year. Others among you, those who are just getting started with building advocacy practices, may be looking at ways to improve what you’ve started (or maybe you even just hope to get started!) Among the marketing tactics we should all be using is a marketing website. In fact, except for finding public speaking opportunities, your website is arguably THE most important piece of marketing you can use. Most

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Charge More! It’s Good for Everyone (Including Your Clients)!

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It’s the question I’m asked by newbies more frequently than any other: How much can I charge? (BTW – what they really mean is – How much can I make?) To answer those questions in 2014, I posed these questions: What is it worth to find someone who can provide quality to a life that has little or no quality because of health problems? What is it worth to find someone who can save you tens of thousands of dollars, or to prevent you from going bankrupt? What is it worth to find someone who can alleviate your fear and

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Shooting Your Advocacy Practice in the Foot

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Readers of this blog may remember that my husband and I have been in the process of moving – from Upstate NY (where they had 40 inches of snow last week!) to Central Florida. (No, no snow here so far 🙂 ) Moving is a bear – there are no two ways about that. Ours took place in two stages: first to a rental house, putting 75% of our household goods into storage. Then Stage Two, this past week, moving into our newly built home, bringing our goods out of storage. Now, of course, we’re trying to make our way

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What the Presidential Election Results Mean for Patient Advocates

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When President Barack Obama ran for office in 2008, healthcare reform was already an enormous and contentious topic. In those days, I was invited to speak to dozens of groups of patients and caregivers to help audiences sort out the issues that comprised healthcare reform so they could, on their own, decide which aspects (if any) were important to them. From the concept of “universal” healthcare through a public option, to coverage for pre-existing conditions, to portability, tort reform, free vaccinations to develop “herd immunity,” and many more, we looked at the whole of the topic as objectively as possible.

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Revisiting the Question: Advocate and Proxy, Too? Making Decisions for Clients

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Two years ago we asked whether a health/patient advocate can also be a decision-maker for her client in the form of being a healthcare proxy or guardian (the patient-designated person who makes end-of-life decisions for the patient, based on wishes the patient has legally documented). Since the ethics and standards of the original advocate role very specifically state that an advocate WILL NOT and CAN NOT make decisions for a client, would the new role of proxy or guardian create a conflict-of-interest? The scenario shared was that “Gwen” had been Mrs. Smith’s advocate for a long period of time and

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