advocacy business

Misleading Headline Provides an Opportunity

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This week the Chicago Tribune featured patient advocacy as a growing trend – a marvelous exposure to private advocacy for the uninitiated (uninitiated = most of the known universe). Several of our APHA members were mentioned in the article and for the most part, it was an excellent representation of the status of private advocacy. Except for the headline: Now, most of us are intelligent enough to know that headlines are created to suck in readers, and too often, intentionally focus on some point that doesn’t really represent the story – just draws those readers. And so it was with …

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Enemies? No, But With an Important Distinction

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A recent email exchange with an APHA member highlighted a point we don’t make often enough, and one you need to embrace so you can discuss it with potential clients. The problem is – she used it to leap to an errant conclusion, one that demands clarity. In her email, she mentioned that she was considering joining a different professional organization, one that focuses on hospital advocacy, teaching hospital advocates how to do their jobs. She stated that the other organization “has multiple affiliations with those purported enemies of true patient advocacy, patient relations departments.” What? I was so taken …

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Do Advocates Have a Duty to Report Dangerous Patients?

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Warning! This will be one of those posts you think back to from time to time, because the answers aren’t clear or easy, and the stakes are so high. A few weeks ago we all watched the news about 150 people who lost their lives as their plane crashed into the French Alps; a tragic loss of life which we learned later was caused by the co-pilot, who had intentionally crashed the plane – suicide by one – mass murder of 149 others. Horrible, tragic, and just so very, very sad. It’s easy, of course, to dismiss the young pilot …

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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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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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