patient advocacy

Chutzpah! Know When It Crosses the Line

One of my favorite words: Chutzpah! Pronounced “hoots-pah.” A Yiddish word translated as “shameless audacity” or “supreme self-confidence,” as in (according to Merriam-Webster) “personal confidence or courage that allows someone to do or say things that may seem shocking to others.” …. and sometimes a trait required by the most effective of health and patient advocates. Do you have chutzpah? And more importantly, do you know how and when to use it? I ask this because I think there are appropriate times, and inappropriate times, when an advocate needs to showcase his or her chutzpah. Lately I have experienced both, […]

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Babbling Will Get You Nowhere

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Margaret needs help for her aging father who lives 600 miles away from her. She wants to find someone to accompany him to doctors appointments, someone who can review and organize his medical bills as they arrive, and someone who can discuss his medical needs on a three-way phone call (Dad, Margaret and an advocate) once each week. Dad is happy with the idea and is willing to pay for the service. The “perfect” client, right? Here’s how I know Margaret’s story: She sent an email to our “info” email address at AdvoConnection, asking for the best way to find

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Happy Birthday to Us! AdvoConnection Turns 5

Dateline: September 1, 2009 The AdvoConnection membership organization was launched on this date in an effort to find people who could help patients navigate their medical journeys. Happy Birthday to Us! (Yes – “us” – because the AdvoConnection Membership Organization was the original name of Alliance of Professional Health Advocates!) My how times have changed! (And yet, they haven’t changed much at all… ) The original site was only intended to be a directory – sort of Match.com for patients and advocates – and 30 people stepped forward to be included. (We had been collecting email addresses of interested parties

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You’re Not Charging Enough, and It’s Hurting Our Entire Profession

What is it worth to find someone who can save your life? What is it worth to find someone who can provide quality to a life that has little or no quality because of health problems? What is it worth to find someone who can save you tens of thousands of dollars, or to prevent you from going bankrupt? What is it worth to find someone who can alleviate your fear, and provide peace of mind? …………….. I can tell you what it’s worth based on what I read in the press, in the APHA Forum, in my email and

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The One Thing That Will Cause Your Private Advocacy Practice to Fail

Here are samples of some inquiries I have received from people wanting to be advocates. See if you can guess what they all have in common: I want to help Medicaid patients find doctors who will take their insurance. We plan to help children with mental health issues find the help they need. I want to help young girls who find themselves pregnant find the social services they need to get them through their pregnancies. I want to work with churches and senior centers to help their members and attendees understand their medical care. I want to help lymphoma patients

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The One Thing You Must Do to Grow Your Advocacy Practice (and Take a Vacation, too)

The answer to this notion of “the one thing you must do” boils down to trust, although maybe not in the way you’ll expect… I say this to you, with the keen awareness of the fact that trusting isn’t something I do well. Having spent the first half of my life as Pollyanna reincarnated, then having been burned by too many people I DID trust along the way, including an ex-husband, an ex-business partner, and the notorious reason for all this empowerment and advocacy work of mine – the doctors who I trusted to help me whether my mysterious odyssey

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Mentors and SIGs – Our Best Resources Yet

Updated March 2017 When APHA and AdvoConnection were launched in 2009, the resources that existed for starting and growing a private, independent advocacy practice were few and far between. There weren’t many advocacy experts, because with only a few exceptions, there just weren’t many people with the track record to call themselves experts. Certainly there were experts in different useful topics; for example lawyers or insurance people who could take what they knew and apply it to advocacy. So we took advantage of those experts’ good graces to build the first foundations for practices going forward. We still rely on

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APHA Blog : The Alliance of Professional Health Advocates
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