You’re Not Charging Enough, and It’s Hurting Our Entire Profession

5 minutes of reading / 5 Comments / By

What is it worth to find someone who can save your life? What is it worth to find someone who can provide quality to a life that has little or no quality because of health problems? What is it worth to find someone who can save you tens of thousands of dollars, or to prevent you from going bankrupt? What is it worth to find someone who can alleviate your fear, and provide peace of mind? …………….. I can tell you what it’s worth based on what I read in the press, in the APHA Forum, in my email and …

You’re Not Charging Enough, and It’s Hurting Our Entire Profession Continue Reading

The One Thing That Will Cause Your Private Advocacy Practice to Fail

5 minutes of reading / Leave a Comment / By

Here are samples of some inquiries I have received from people wanting to be advocates. See if you can guess what they all have in common: I want to help Medicaid patients find doctors who will take their insurance. We plan to help children with mental health issues find the help they need. I want to help young girls who find themselves pregnant find the social services they need to get them through their pregnancies. I want to work with churches and senior centers to help their members and attendees understand their medical care. I want to help lymphoma patients …

The One Thing That Will Cause Your Private Advocacy Practice to Fail Continue Reading

The One Thing You Must Do to Grow Your Advocacy Practice (and Take a Vacation, too)

6 minutes of reading / Leave a Comment / By

The answer to this notion of “the one thing you must do” boils down to trust, although maybe not in the way you’ll expect… I say this to you, with the keen awareness of the fact that trusting isn’t something I do well. Having spent the first half of my life as Pollyanna reincarnated, then having been burned by too many people I DID trust along the way, including an ex-husband, an ex-business partner, and the notorious reason for all this empowerment and advocacy work of mine – the doctors who I trusted to help me whether my mysterious odyssey …

The One Thing You Must Do to Grow Your Advocacy Practice (and Take a Vacation, too) Continue Reading

Mentors and SIGs – Our Best Resources Yet

4 minutes of reading / Leave a Comment / By

Updated March 2017 When APHA and AdvoConnection were launched in 2009, the resources that existed for starting and growing a private, independent advocacy practice were few and far between. There weren’t many advocacy experts, because with only a few exceptions, there just weren’t many people with the track record to call themselves experts. Certainly there were experts in different useful topics; for example lawyers or insurance people who could take what they knew and apply it to advocacy. So we took advantage of those experts’ good graces to build the first foundations for practices going forward. We still rely on …

Mentors and SIGs – Our Best Resources Yet Continue Reading

The Real Cost of Selling One’s Soul

5 minutes of reading / 2 Comments / By
deal with the devil image

I heard from a friend that he recently sold his start-up business after years of building it to do just that. Wow! I was so impressed! “Take a break!” I replied. “I can only imagine how much work that was and how much money you must have made!” Yes, he told me. It was a LOT of work and he is exhausted. But, he confided, he really didn’t make much money in the sale. What? I was flabbergasted… Then I learned why. It seems that he and his partners, in order to raise the money they needed to make their …

The Real Cost of Selling One’s Soul Continue Reading

Turning Adversity into Proactive Survivorship

4 minutes of reading / 3 Comments / By

It’s been a tough week. From the initial blow, I’ve been a poster child for Kubler Ross’s five stages of grief. At this point I’m probably mid-way between depression and acceptance. If you are a subscriber to my patient empowerment newsletter (not our APHA Monday Mail, rather, my Every Patient’s Advocate one) – then you have already heard my news – I sent out a heads up last Thursday just before my About.com newsletter went out. (If you aren’t a subscriber, why not? 😉 Here’s a link. ) The news is that after almost 7 years and 2000+ articles, out …

Turning Adversity into Proactive Survivorship Continue Reading

Henry Ford, Mary Kay, Success and Patient Advocates

3 minutes of reading / Leave a Comment / By

It’s a holiday week, a quieter time for many businesses, and for that I hope to leave you with some food for thought to ponder your success as an advocacy practice owner… One of my favorite quotes is one that has been attributed to two well-known people. Henry Ford said it first:   If you think you can do a thing or think you can’t do a thing, you’re right. Then Mary Kay Ash (as in cosmetics) put it more eloquently: If you think you can, you can. And if you think you can’t, you’re right. Of course, the translation …

Henry Ford, Mary Kay, Success and Patient Advocates Continue Reading

APHA Blog : The Alliance of Professional Health Advocates
Scroll to Top