patients – APHA Blog : The Alliance of Professional Health Advocates

That Very Very Thin Line – Do NOT Be Tom!

My husband and I moved two years ago to Florida where we now live in an “active adult” community*. We love it! We’re very happy here. We’ve met and made many new friends – people we have truly come to care about.

I’m following in family footsteps. My parents did the same thing decades ago. They lived in a different city, but they, too, lived in an active adult community for 20+ years.

My father, in a somewhat macabre voice, always called it “God’s Waiting Room.”

And, as I learned again this past week, it turns out that we now live in God’s Waiting Room, too.

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16
APR

advocate best practices, advocate marketing, client services, common sense, decision making, health advocates and navigators, patient advocacy, patient safety, patients

emergencies

Pancakes, Snakes, Red Flags, and Advocacy

Posted by: Trisha Torrey

You don’t have to be a huge fan of Dr. Phil’s to appreciate his delightful and useful sayings. He boils down important and sometimes complex concepts into downhome philosophy that helps us better understand our fellow human beings and our lives.

Today we’re going to focus on one of those sayings to improve our ability to ferret out those clients we should not work with (yes, I said, SHOULD NOT work with):

“No matter how flat you make your pancake, it still has two sides.”

Advocacy stories are like those pancakes. They have at least two sides, too.

I raise this today after an exchange with an APHA member about a disconcerting client experience. That came on the heels of another advocate’s experience where, because of a simple typo on her directory profile, a potential client posted a negative review of her work.

Say what? Let’s look at both stories – and, in pancake style, their flip sides.

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26
FEB

advocacy business, advocacy ethics, advocate bad practices, advocate best practices, client services, common sense, decision making, health advocates and navigators, patient advocacy, patients

The Last Four Myths About Starting an Independent Advocacy Practice

Posted by: Trisha Torrey

This is week 3 of our series, and includes the final four myths about starting, building, and growing an independent patient advocacy or care management practice.

To remind you, these myths are based on the comments I’ve heard from advocates who (I’m sorry to say) failed at getting a practice started, not because they don’t know how to be good advocates (they do!) but because they tried to get started despite their misconceptions about what it would be like to do so.

Here are the final four myths for you to consider, in hopes these misconceptions aren’t yours. Or, if they are, we hope this helps you reconsider, and take steps to be sure they don’t sink your advocacy practice.

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29
JAN

advocacy business, advocacy certification, advocate bad practices, client services, common sense, decision making, health advocates and navigators, patient advocacy, patients, professional standards

3 More Myths About Building a Successful Independent Advocacy Practice

Posted by: Trisha Torrey

We began last week with this series of myths about starting, building, and growing an independent patient advocacy or care management practice.

As a reminder, these myths are based on the comments I’ve heard from advocates who just couldn’t get a practice going – who (sad to say) failed – not because they don’t know how to be good advocates (they do!) but because they tried to get started despite their misconceptions about what it would be like to do so.

This week we have three more of those myths for you to consider, in hopes these misconceptions aren’t yours. Or, if they are, helping you to get past them.

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22
JAN

advocacy business, advocate best practices, advocate marketing, advocate marketing tools, client services, common sense, decision making, health advocates and navigators, legal questions about health advocacy, patient advocacy, patients, Start and Grow a Private Advocacy Practice

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

Posted by: Trisha Torrey

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 did have trouble counting again), in chronological order, the oldest to the newest:

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18
DEC

advocacy business, advocacy ethics, advocate bad practices, advocate best practices, advocate education, advocate finances, advocate marketing, advocate marketing tools, allegiance, caregivers, client services, common sense, decision making, doctors / physicians, empathy, health advocates and navigators, healthcare reform, hospital patient advocates, hospitalized patients, hustle, legal questions about health advocacy, media, money, patient advocacy, patient safety, patients, professional standards

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