common sense

Enemies? No, But With an Important Distinction

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A recent email exchange with an APHA member highlighted a point we don’t make often enough, and one you need to embrace so you can discuss it with potential clients. The problem is – she used it to leap to an errant conclusion, one that demands clarity. In her email, she mentioned that she was considering joining a different professional organization, one that focuses on hospital advocacy, teaching hospital advocates how to do their jobs. She stated that the other organization “has multiple affiliations with those purported enemies of true patient advocacy, patient relations departments.” What? I was so taken …

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Do Advocates Have a Duty to Report Dangerous Patients?

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Warning! This will be one of those posts you think back to from time to time, because the answers aren’t clear or easy, and the stakes are so high. A few weeks ago we all watched the news about 150 people who lost their lives as their plane crashed into the French Alps; a tragic loss of life which we learned later was caused by the co-pilot, who had intentionally crashed the plane – suicide by one – mass murder of 149 others. Horrible, tragic, and just so very, very sad. It’s easy, of course, to dismiss the young pilot …

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Helping Your Clients Deduct Your Services From Their Income Taxes (IRS and CRA)

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(Reviewed and Updated February 2022) It’s a good year to revisit patient advocacy services and income taxes. Our first review came in 2010. We looked again in 2013. While little (maybe nothing) has changed, this year I have a new suggestion for you – a bit of a twist. In question is whether or not your patient advocacy services should be included in the list of medical expenses that allow them to be deducted from your clients’ income taxes; whether they can be used to reach that 10% or 7.5% threshold that allows them to be deductible (for the IRS). …

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Has Your Work Been Plagiarized?

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They say that imitation is the highest form of flattery. While there may be some truth to that, there is no truth to the idea that plagiarism is a form of flattery at all. In my last post I shared with you my excitement at the advent of some new competition in the advocacy space, and gave you a list of six reasons why competition is a good thing, something to celebrate. But sometimes there’s a downside to competition, too. One such competitor to AdvoConnection, a new directory being set up in hopes of taking your money to match you …

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Remembering the Mean Girls

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In Fall 2010, about 150 health advocates, many of whom were just considering entering the profession, convened in Washington DC for the Second Annual NAHAC Conference. I was there at the invitation of NAHAC, to both be a vendor, and to give a presentation about marketing for advocates. The conference was a resounding success in my estimation, using my two conference-success measuring sticks: 1. I met so many smart, wonderful, passionate people and 2. I learned so much more than I imparted. But there was one aspect to the conference that left a bad taste in my mouth, marring the …

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The Two Pieces of Advice You Will Ignore – Until You Are Burned

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Consider these scenarios: Scenario #1. Jane calls you, in a panic. Her mother, age 88, who lives in your city, has fallen at her nursing home. Mother Frederick has been hospitalized, but Jane can’t get there until late tomorrow and wonders if you would be willing to help her mother until Jane can get there. Of course you can! This is the very reason you are an advocate. (Alternatively, Jane asks you to review her mother’s medical bills because she’s afraid her mother’s insurance isn’t covering everything it needs to cover. You, as a medical billing specialist, agree eagerly to …

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A New Year, and the Responsibility of Potential

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“Happy New Year to you and much happiness and success in 2015!”… You know that all business conducted by email or holiday card during the past few weeks has ended with just that greeting – or variations on that theme. It can be the hollowest of greetings – not that you don’t really wish the person you’re writing to success and happiness – of course you do! But usually when we add it to a casual correspondence because it’s easy, it’s simply cordial – a good ending – without much thought to what’s behind it. But this holiday season, I’ve …

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