health advocates and navigators

Goldilocks, Dad and Finding Care That’s Just Right

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My dad retired in the 1980s. In addition to his pension he had also earned health insurance coverage for the rest of his life. Over time, as you can imagine, the actual value of that insurance became more and more evident; In all likelihood, it was a many-years-of-life saver, because he lived until 2012. But then, I think his health insurance may have killed him, too. Dad retired early at the ripe old age of 60, because when he was 59, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. His resulting surgery did not successfully remove all the cancer cells, so Dad …

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8 Ways Your Advocacy Practice May Be Like The Giving Tree

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(Channeling the Plain White T’s here…) The book is a childhood classic, Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree. It tells the story of a tree that gives all it has to a boy as he grows from little boyhood to adulthood. From providing shade and a place to climb, to allowing the boy to sell the apples it yields, to finally letting the boy (now a man) cut it down to build a house, and then later build a boat out of it. In the end, when the tree has nothing left to give, “Boy” simply sits on the Giving Tree’s …

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Can an Advocate Do More Harm Than Good?

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Yes, sadly (although rarely) a patient advocate might do more harm than good. I was reminded of this recently when I heard from an APHA member who had picked up the ball from another advocate (not an APHA member) who had totally messed up the work a client-patient needed to have done – an advocate who had actually made the client’s situation worse. The problem-creating advocate had been working with her client through a hospitalization. As far as we know, that work went well. Her core business is medical-navigational advocacy. However, later, when the client’s hospital bill arrived, the client …

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Broken Hearts Remind Us to Show Sympathy and Empathy

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Joey Eisch, the 12-year-old son of friends of ours, was a major goofball with an enormous smile, a contagious laugh, and a sheer love of life.The photo above gives you a sense of him. It was taken at his parents’ wedding just two months ago – a wedding my husband and I attended, where we had a few minutes to spend with Joey. Just such a happy dynamo of a boy. Then, on Friday, July 24, Joey was killed while riding his bicycle.

A Second Opinion Isn’t Good Enough

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dog with a bone

I’ve stewed over this for years, since 2013 when he was first arrested. But ever since Farid Fata was sentenced to 45 years in prison (ONLY 45!) for fraud, I’m like a dog with a bone. I just can’t let go. Last week I took at look at the Farid Fata case. He is the (former) oncologist who sentenced 553 people to their death or a lifetime of illness or financial bust by lying to them – telling them they had cancer they did not have, then treating them with chemo they didn’t need and ruining their lives. The 45 …

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How Professional Patient Advocates Would Have Stopped Farid Fata

5 minutes of reading / 7 Comments / By

On Friday, Dr. Farid Fata was sentenced to 45 years in prison in the state of Michigan. If you read or watch the news reports you would think the reason behind his long sentence had something to do with the fact that he had diagnosed 500+ people with cancer they didn’t really have, told them they needed chemo, then treated them for those cancers they didn’t have. As a result many died, some will deal with the aftermaths of unneeded chemo for the rest of their lives, some are ruined financially in medical debt, and worse. The headlines read things …

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Why It Takes So Long to Acquire a New Client

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We live in an instant gratification world, don’t we? I suppose we could harken back to BF Skinner’s hungry rats, then combine that with the expectation of instant answers we get from the Internet to understand why we, as human beings, want and expect everything to happen the MOMENT we want it to happen! Think it… will it… snap your fingers – there it is. This concept came to mind after a conversation with my husband. He recently retired from his field engineering career. He loves to golf and fish and this time of the year, doesn’t lack for anything …

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