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Has Your Work Been Plagiarized?

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They say that imitation is the highest form of flattery. While there may be some truth to that, there is no truth to the idea that plagiarism is a form of flattery at all. In my last post I shared with you my excitement at the advent of some new competition in the advocacy space, and gave you a list of six reasons why competition is a good thing, something to celebrate. But sometimes there’s a downside to competition, too. One such competitor to AdvoConnection, a new directory being set up in hopes of taking your money to match you […]

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

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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

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Be Bold! Like Wearing Pants to School

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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.

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Sorry. That’s Not Good Enough

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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.

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APHA Blog : The Alliance of Professional Health Advocates
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