health advocates and navigators

Announcing: A Big Change for Admission to the AdvoConnection Directory

Many readers of this blog are familiar with, or are already listed in the AdvoConnection Directory. It’s THE place to be for private, professional, independent advocates who want to be found and hired by patients or caregivers who need them. It’s the largest, and the only “vetted” directory that exists for advocates. We”re announcing today a big change to what it takes to be listed in the directory which will affect almost everyone who has given thought to being included in the directory – but isn’t yet listed. That may include you! We’ll begin with a little history to help …

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STOP! HALT! Keep Quiet … or Lose Business

image from Graham Richardson, Flickr

Last week two of my friends invited me to participate with them in a local March for Our Lives event being held Saturday. If you are tuned into the news and politics of today, you know that marches were held to support gun control to keep people, especially our children, safe from being victims of mass murderers. Hundreds of thousands of individuals marched on Washington, DC, and in hundreds of other cities to bring attention to this issue. To my friends’ invitation, I replied no. I couldn’t / wouldn’t go. But maybe not for the reasons you might think. It’s …

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Channeling Oliver Twist and the Two Steps of MORE

Oliver from Wikimedia Commons signed b.l.: C.E. Brock

This past week, for the first time, AdvoConnection Directory-listed APHA members were able to access their statistics (analytics) for their AdvoConnection profiles. How many visitors found the advocate’s profile in the last month? How many of those visitors were unique? (first visits) How long did they stay, on average, to read the profile? Of course, the idea for each listed advocate is to try to improve upon those numbers, month over month, knowing that the MORE people who contact them, the MORE clients they may end up working with… Or, with a nod to Charles Dickens, and channeling Oliver Twist, …

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Income Tax Time – Saving Money and Saving Trouble

It’s that time of year when, every time we turn around, we’re being reminded that it’s time to file our income tax returns. I rank those moments right down there with getting a tooth drilled, hearing that a high school friend died, or, these days, watching the news. Yeah. So, in hopes of removing some of the sting, and in an effort to pull all the material together, accessible in one place, I’m going to take this occasion to compile into one post what I’ve had to say over the years about taxes on this blog: yours, your clients, and …

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Pancakes, Snakes, Red Flags, and Advocacy

You don’t have to be a huge fan of Dr. Phil’s to appreciate his delightful and useful sayings. He boils down important and sometimes complex concepts into downhome philosophy that helps us better understand our fellow human beings and our lives. Today we’re going to focus on one of those sayings to improve our ability to ferret out those clients we should not work with (yes, I said, SHOULD NOT work with): “No matter how flat you make your pancake, it still has two sides.” Advocacy stories are like those pancakes. They have at least two sides, too. I raise …

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Fashionistas! What Hats Does an Advocate Wear?

I played golf the other day with a group of women I didn’t know well. I came away from the round being less pleased with my golf game (I really can’t putt!), but much pleased with the conversation and its application for our health and patient advocacy profession. In fact, I was so pleased with it, I went home and recorded notes so I could remember the conversation to share with you. The ladies I played with were very curious about advocates. They all had healthcare horror stories to share. One had recently been through some bad medical experiences with …

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The Biggest Risk in Life: Are You Living the Life You Want to Live?

A few days ago, I heard from Beatrice (not her real name), an APHA member who has been successfully running her patient advocacy practice for several years. We met a few years ago when she and her husband attended APHA workshops. I’ve been impressed ever since with their go-getter attitudes and their ability to create the business they wanted to have. Until this week. Beatrice, a young advocate by our typical demographics (I’m guessing her age here… maybe late 40s? possibly 50) wrote to tell me she had suffered a heart attack in December. Yes. Really.

APHA Blog : The Alliance of Professional Health Advocates
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