patient advocacy

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

6 minutes of reading / 3 Comments / By /

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 […]

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

Be Bold! Like Wearing Pants to School

6 minutes of reading / 1 Comment / By /
wearing pants to school

OK – I will set the stage for this blog post with a true confession… I graduated from high school in 1969. (Go ahead – do the math!) So you can imagine I was interested in this post on Mashable called October 1969 Hippie High School. Now, granted, the photo above was taken 4 months after I graduated in June. But still – there is something about these photos that isn’t immediately identifiable today as a BIG DEAL. But it was a big deal! At the time it was HUGE. That is, some of the girls were wearing PANTs to school.

Be Bold! Like Wearing Pants to School Continue Reading

Sorry. That’s Not Good Enough

7 minutes of reading / 2 Comments / By /

One of the most visible changes in the new health insurance reality are the medical bill surprises people are receiving that they never received before, for services covered previously as a matter of course. You know – whereas their insurance automatically approved a CT scan for purpose X in the past, now patients need pre-approval. Without that pre-approval, payment for that CT scan comes out of their own pockets – totally unexpected and usually very expensive. Most of us learn the hard way that we need to get permission for many of the services that used to be automatically approved.

Sorry. That’s Not Good Enough Continue Reading

A New Year, and the Responsibility of Potential

7 minutes of reading / 1 Comment / By /

“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

A New Year, and the Responsibility of Potential Continue Reading

The Weakest Link

6 minutes of reading / Leave a Comment / By /

Remember that TV show from a decade or more ago? When a contestant failed to answer a quiz question correctly, the host would sternly declare, “YOU ARE the WEAKEST LINK. GOOD-BYE!”? Remaining, of course, were the more knowledgeable contestants, presumably a stronger chain of smarter people who could get the job done. Oh man, how I wish I had been able to invoke that host’s dismissal powers this past week! As both my husband and I had to deal with different parts of the healthcare system, we encountered roadblocks – the weakest links – and in each case, we had

The Weakest Link Continue Reading

And They Called it Puppy L-o-o-ve

5 minutes of reading / 1 Comment / By /

< ….cue Paul Anka or Donny Osmond…. > …. Remember when you were a teenager in puppy love> Oh! You couldn’t stand to be away from the new person in your life! You knew you would love each other forever – but the rest of the world that was getting in the way of that love. THEY thought you were too young, but you knew better! …. And they called it puppy love Oh I guess they’ll never know How a young heart really feels And why I love her so It was the highest of highs, finding love for

And They Called it Puppy L-o-o-ve Continue Reading

Gallimaufry: Your Questions, Some Answers, Media and Just Stuff

7 minutes of reading / Leave a Comment / By /

Last summer I came upon this great word – a word I had never heard before, but which can be used in so many aspects of conversation and life! The word is “gallimaufry.”? It means a hodgepodge, a jumble, or confused medley of things – items, ideas, anything at all. It’s a great word for an advocacy entrepreneur! It describes the many ideas that come together to define challenges and create solutions, or the many activities it takes to achieve success, or even the creative approaches it takes to help our clients, or help each other. I’ve even adopted the

Gallimaufry: Your Questions, Some Answers, Media and Just Stuff Continue Reading

APHA Blog : The Alliance of Professional Health Advocates →←
Scroll to Top