patient safety

Can an Advocate Do More Harm Than Good?

Yes, sadly (although rarely) a patient advocate might do more harm than good. I was reminded of this recently when I heard from an APHA member who had picked up the ball from another advocate (not an APHA member) who had totally messed up the work a client-patient needed to have done – an advocate who had actually made the client’s situation worse. The problem-creating advocate had been working with her client through a hospitalization. As far as we know, that work went well. Her core business is medical-navigational advocacy. However, later, when the client’s hospital bill arrived, the client …

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A Second Opinion Isn’t Good Enough

dog with a bone

I’ve stewed over this for years, since 2013 when he was first arrested. But ever since Farid Fata was sentenced to 45 years in prison (ONLY 45!) for fraud, I’m like a dog with a bone. I just can’t let go. Last week I took at look at the Farid Fata case. He is the (former) oncologist who sentenced 553 people to their death or a lifetime of illness or financial bust by lying to them – telling them they had cancer they did not have, then treating them with chemo they didn’t need and ruining their lives. The 45 …

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Do Advocates Have a Duty to Report Dangerous Patients?

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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Is Grampa Packin’ Heat? And Other Safety Considerations for Advocates

Sometimes a conversation gets started in our APHA Forum that brings me up short. (One reason I SO love the Forum!) One of those conversations was kicked off this week by a member who posed a question: are other members asking potential new clients whether they have guns in their homes? I’m not a gun person, and I live in an area where we just don’t think about guns much, so I really didn’t understand the question at first…. until others chimed in. It’s about safety – which, of course, makes perfect sense. Many members followed up Marie’s question with …

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Pushing Back

I truly dislike negativity. I suspect you do, too. As a kid, I would avoid arguments like the plague. I hated the upset that went along with it – that feeling of frustration, and churning in my stomach. Ugh. As I got older, I realized that negativity was always going to be a part of my life whether I liked it or not. Avoiding it was not an option, because avoiding it meant I wasn’t sticking up for myself or my loved ones or the tenets I believed in. Avoiding it meant I couldn’t right a wrong – or learn …

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Hospital Providers Come to Patient Advocates’ Defense

Last week I had the opportunity to speak to two groups of hospital quality personnel; those folks who work in hospitals who are charged with overseeing the safety of their patients. They are QIOS, that is, Quality Improvement Officers – and their jobs depend on making sure that their body of patients this year are safer than their body of patients were last year, that next year’s patients are safer than this year’s, and so forth. My overall message was “let patient’s help”- the idea that no one cares as much about a patient’s good outcomes than the patient and …

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Healthcare System Challenges in 2013 Create Opportunities for Advocates

The healthcare times, they are a-changing! As we wrap up 2012 and look forward to next year (or perhaps, by the time you read this, it will already be 2013), there are a number of issues and challenges patients – our clients – need to be concerned with. Take the time to become familiar with these updates and challenges, alerts and warnings; they may create marketing opportunities for you as you alert potential clients that you can solve them as a part of your service. I’ve written about them here: Some are simply updates to how the system is managed …

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APHA Blog : The Alliance of Professional Health Advocates
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