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How Does a Patient Choose the Best Advocate to Hire?

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I’ve been working on updating the AdvoConnection Directory website because it was time, because search engines look favorably upon updates. And because my not-frequent-enough review of the site’s analytics produced a big surprise! A surprise I’ll share with you here today. To be clear – no changes were made to the actual search and profile areas – those all belong to our listed advocates who make those changes themselves. Instead, I edited and updated the support pages – everything from the homepage, to the About Us page, to the “how to choose and interview an advocate” page. For some background: […]

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The Momma Test

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Portrait of an old woman with her adult daughter.

Over the years, one of my favorite things to do has been to work with / speak to / address college students. They are young, aren’t yet set in their ways, still hope to save the world, are naive to the “follow the money” aspects of healthcare and, honestly, it’s just plain fun. Last week I had the privilege of participating in an ethics debate for a well-known and respected university in a course called Controversies in Healthcare (medical, legal, and bio ethics), to a combination group of law students and medical students, on the topic of independent advocacy –

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Loaded for Bear May Mean No Care

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image from Wikimedia Commons

Last week, I received an email from a woman, I’ll call her Miranda, taking me to task for an article I had written that she found online. If Miranda had her way, I’d be walking the plank about now, or on my way to life in prison. The article she found is about patient modesty and how it affects one’s ability to get medical care. It poses the problem, considers the roots of the situation, then offers ideas to help someone get beyond modesty hurdles in order to benefit from better medical care. Oh, but Miranda was not happy about

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Because Greetings Should Be All About Them

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Honestly, I’m tired of the argument. I live and work in Florida where you would think it was some sort of national disgrace to wish someone “Happy Holidays”. As if somehow the failure to wish a “Merry Christmas” has been co-opted by political correctness as a personal insult to them. In my (not so) humble opinion, it has gotten worse in the last couple of years. I chalk that up to the facts that (1) I didn’t live in Florida until about two years ago (and therefore heard far less vitriol than seems to be standard fare here) and (2)

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Like Learning to Ride Your Bike…

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In an email conversation with one of our APHA mentors last week, a point that is so often lacking in the understanding of an independent advocacy practice was made: That it usually takes 3 to 5 years to know if someone will be a successful business owner, advocacy included. That so many advocates quit before they get there, never giving themselves a chance, really. They start out thinking it will be easy because, afterall, many have been advocates for decades in previous careers… just a simple switch to self-employment, right? When they finally understand that the first few years are

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Where Survivor (TV) Meets a New Advocacy Practice

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Survivor – Jeff Probst and Company (and company and company and company!). Currently in its 37th season, I’ve watched probably 30 of those seasons. I’m more about the psychology, head games, and strategy. My husband is more about the physical endurance. In total we usually disagree on who we think should win any given season (the one person who never gets voted off the island!) but we both agree that the person who wins deserves to because they have gone into the game with a strategy, implemented it, and as a result, “survived.” As I watched last week’s Survivor episode

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Successes, Failures, and My Biggest Surprise

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12 years. While on the one hand, 12 years seems like a looong time, on the other hand, it has gone by in the blink of an eye. I’m referring to the 12 years I’ve focused my professional life on building the profession of independent health and patient advocacy, having made the decision in 2007 to begin building an online presence for advocates through the AdvoConnection Directory website. It eventually launched in Fall 2009* and evolved to become The Alliance of Professional Health Advocates. So I’ve been giving thought to what I consider to be our biggest successes, biggest failures,

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