patient advocacy

It’s a Thing!

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One of my favorite activities as the director of the Alliance of Professional Health Advocates is conducting the APHA workshops in business and marketing that we offer a few times each year. One reason I enjoy them so much is because I meet our APHA members – passionate people who plan to improve their business and marketing knowledge in order to strengthen their practices. It is TRULY and ALWAYS a pleasure – and fun. My absolute favorite workshops are those where I learn as much from attendees as I teach to them. And so it was recently in Phoenix, Arizona […]

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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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Celebrating the 5th Annual Private Professional Patient Advocates Week

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Our Fifth Annual Private Professional Patient Advocates Week is this week – March 16 to 22 -and I’m here to share tales of the growth of our profession. Can it be that patient advocacy as a profession is now so “old” ? Granted, there were a handful of advocates practicing long before we began to quantify and qualify the profession. The year 2009, with the launch of NAHAC and APHA / AdvoConnection, marked the beginning of the growth that would make us a recognized profession across North America. Some background: From the 30-ish people who joined AdvoConnection in 2009 – for

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The 2015 Schueler Patient Advocacy Compass Award Winner Is…

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Ken Schueler, before he passed away in 2011, was the most exemplary of professional, independent patient advocates. He was kind and compassionate, extremely knowledgeable, a great businessman, and a gift to all those who knew him. One of his former patients said of Ken, “When I contacted Ken Schueler,it was like finding my compass.” Ken’s ethics and standards were above reproach. He saved lives, improved the quality of life for many, and generously donated his time helping others learn to be great health advocates in order to grow the profession. These important contributions helped to establish and grow our profession

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Head to Head, Toe to Toe – And Who Are the Big Winners?

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Updated 2/10/2020 Like Jeopardy, I’m going to start by giving you the answer: Patients and Caregivers Smart Health and Patient Advocates So what’s the question? That would be: Who are the biggest beneficiaries when it comes to competition in the health and patient advocate space? Just want to start with that perspective so we don’t lose sight of it as I begin describing recent events, as a prelude to some big excitement and perhaps, that moment we’ve all been waiting for…. In the eight years I’ve been working on promoting patient advocacy, there was more commotion, more positive movement, more

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200 Patient Advocacy Ideas For You

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Yes – this post is #201 on this blog since it was first launched on June 1, 2010. At around 800 to 1,000 words per post (average) – that’s a lot of idea sharing. When the blog was first started, it was intended to speak to both advocates and the patients who needed good ideas and advice. The AdvoConnection Directory was new. The membership organization, now called the Alliance of Professional Health Advocates, was simply called the AdvoConnection Member Organization. There was no cost to be a member (there is now!) – and yet we still had only about 120

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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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