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3 Myths About Building an Independent Advocacy Practice

The real shame of this new series of posts is that it’s the result of feedback from people who gave up on their dreams of starting and growing independent, private advocacy practices. The further shame is that all those patients who they might have helped will not get their help, and may never get what they need from the healthcare system. Over the years, hundreds of people have come and gone in our profession. My educated guess: for every 10 who take the early steps toward fulfilling their dreams, only 2 or 3 have succeeded. Further, the people one might […]

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The Patient Advocate’s Version of “Time’s Up!”

It’s no surprise to any of us women who work for a living that sexual harassment and violence have been part of the fabric of our workplaces for our entire careers. With few exceptions, we have all had our “Me Too” experiences to one degree or another. And it doesn’t take more than a few seconds for our brains to take us back there to the anger, frustration, fear, and embarrassment we felt at the time. While my intent is not to co-opt the Time’s Up Movement for women in the workplace, I cannot pass up the opportunity to point

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Kickstarting 2018: The ONE Key Exercise that Will Propel Your Practice Success (and a giveaway, too!)

Happy New Year to you! And so begins another year of improving patients’ healthcare system outcomes in one way or another, and realizing we are making a huge difference in people’s lives! We’re going to dive right in to the new year looking at the ONE imperative exercise I have come to believe will make you successful. Can you commit? WILL you commit? It won’t cost you money (well, OK, maybe the cost of a latte.) It will cost you some time. And it will make all the difference in the world to your practice-building, the patients who need you,

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Top 10 “Best Of” APHA Posts: 2017 in Review

As 2017 comes to a close, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at the blog posts you, my readers, considered to be most worth your reading time. Using post analytics, I’m able to see how many of you have read each of the 44 posts from 2017. Then, accommodating for the fact that some posts have been online for 11+ months, while others were just posted recently, it’s easy to tell which ones captured your imagination (or google’s search interest) to make the assessment. So here are the top 10 posts (well – OK – I

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Save Money and Time with These End of the Year Tasks

How is it possible we’ve reached the end of 2017 already? Why does it seem like the years zoom past us faster than the previous ones did? As we marvel at how quickly time passes, we, as small business owners will be wise to do some end-of-year clean up and planning tasks to help us accomplish a few things: Spend time now to save time later. Spend money now to possibly save money both this year and next year. Review our efforts to maximize our effectiveness – and our successes – in the new year. See how many of these

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What Matt Lauer Can Teach Us About Private, Independent Advocacy

The shocking news last week (although not-so-shocking to some) that Matt Lauer had been kicked to the curb by NBC came in tandem with an email conversation with a newly minted health advocate who wanted to be listed in the AdvoConnection Directory, but who has a little (not so little) problem with her website and marketing materials. It struck me that Lauer’s behavior, as he faced accusations, even though the circumstances are NOT at all the same, provides a lesson to share with you.

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An Advocate’s Guide to CYA

One of the simplest best practices for patient advocates is also the one with the fuzziest line. Sometimes it can be difficult to know at what point that fuzzy line will be crossed, and since crossing it can lead to problems for a client, put a private advocate out of business, or even result in a lawsuit against the advocate, we need clearer definition to be sure we C our own As (that is, CYA = Cover Your A**.) Let me explain.

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