advocate best practices

Don’t Let HIPPA* Drag Us Down

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Today I’m sharing a beef about HIPAA. Respect for our profession is at stake. Remember, one of our goals is to become one of THE most respected of professions who work in the healthcare system. Today’s post is an ode to that goal. HIPAA is the acronym for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. (It often surprises people to learn that the P in HIPAA has nothing to do with privacy, because that’s the specific reason we must deal with it – for privacy’s sake.) Advocates are no strangers to HIPAA, even though we are still unsure about whether …

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Sleep Deprivation Spells Opportunity – and Responsibility

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Saturday night (well, OK, in the wee hours of Sunday morning) across most of the US and Canada, we “sprung forward” our clocks, resulting in lost sleep, and at least a day of being totally thrown off because the day seemed… well…. just weird. Since most of us don’t work on a Sunday, the day of adjustment helped us acclimate, and then – life goes on with a longer day of sunshine through next Fall. But what if you had to lose that sleep every few days, then re-acclimate every few days? What if you spent your life in a …

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A Career, a Profession, and a Calling with Responsibility, Too

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Most of us working as advocates apply the word “profession” to our work. Those who have been advocates for a longer period of time might tell you it has turned into a career. I often hear from new advocates, or those who wannabe advocates that they feel that this profession of advocacy (or what might evolve for them to a career of advocacy) is also a calling. So let’s look at that word “calling” for a minute. Merriam Webster tells us that a calling is: a strong inner impulse toward a particular course of action especially when accompanied by conviction …

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It’s That Time of the Year – Income Taxes! for You and Your Clients

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(Updated March 2021) Note: this is a good post to bookmark (or “favorite”) so you can come back to it when it’s time to do your income taxes, or print it or send a link to clients and former clients to help them with theirs… Yes – it’s time to look at preparing our income tax statements for Uncle Sam (or even Justin Trudeau!) How does our paid work affect our income taxes or our clients’ taxes?

Hey Little Girls: Yes, Women Can Be Brilliant!

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(To my gentleman readers – please pardon this week’s post. You are more than welcome to read it, of course, and there will be advantages to doing so, but it’s really aimed at the females among us. That will make sense momentarily.) This week’s post comes as a result of three experiences from the past few weeks, all reminders of the necessity of tooting one’s own horn. We’ll set the stage with one of those experiences; that is, publication this week by the AP of this article Little girls doubt that women can be brilliant, study shows Now, I’m a …

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When Passion and Reality Collide

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Over the years, I have connected with thousands of people who intend to become independent health advocates and care managers, and 99.9% of them have one thing in common: their choice of health advocacy as a career is a result of their passion for helping others. They are caring individuals with skills for navigating some aspect of the healthcare system. They are empathetic, and those they will help recognize their empathy right away.They aren’t looking to make a fortune in business. Instead, much of their reward will come from knowing they have helped improve the quality of other people’s lives. …

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The 2017 Advocates’ Challenges

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Since I started this blog, and as each new year begins, I try to think of ways to challenge advocate-readers (and advocate-wannabe-readers) with ways they can improve their work, their results for clients, and their businesses, too. This year, that task is so very simple. Unfortunately, that’s not the good news. Sadly, it’s more like the bad news. Bad news – because this year’s challenges all come from complaints and problems I’ve been asked to respond to – or even fix – in just the past few months. Oh how I dislike this part of my work! I hate dealing …

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