Advocacy=Empowerment

Posted on May 31, 2022

As a professional patient advocate, I am often asked – “What exactly do you do?” My short answer is always, “Patient Advocates of Southwest FL empowers clients to confidently make informed healthcare decisions.” The longer version goes something like: “We provide our clients with background knowledge of the healthcare system, making them aware of their options so that they feel confident in voicing their care goals and choices.”

As a professional patient advocate, I am often asked – “What exactly do you do?” My short answer is always, “Patient Advocates of Southwest FL empowers clients to confidently make informed healthcare decisions.” The longer version goes something like: “We provide our clients with background knowledge of the healthcare system, making them aware of their options so that they feel confident in voicing their care goals and choices.”

As a nation, we have come to expect that healthcare should be simple. We expect to be treated as a priority and to receive optimal care, resulting in favorable outcomes. Down through many generations, family advocates - spouses or other family members - have watched over loved ones with medical concerns by accompanying them to doctor’s visits, remaining at the hospital bedside in an effort to assure their health care is managed in the best way possible.

Unfortunately, during the last 15+ years, with business of healthcare becoming considerably more complicated, patient advocating has become more of a challenge. While family advocates continue to watch over the care of their spouse, parent or child – being present during the visit to verify understanding of test results, medication changes, next steps or other advice the physician or other medical provider is prescribing.

Specifically, during the last 3 years I’ve noticed a change. Each and every day I receive call or inquiry from overwhelmed and concerned family advocates they are not doing enough. They are right to be concerned.

Since the 1990s, US healthcare costs have climbed at greater the rate of inflation. Managed care plans (insurance contracts with healthcare providers and medical facilities to provide care at reduced costs) have expanded. Yet, according to a recent report from The Commonwealth Fund, finds the US ranks last overall in the areas of access to care, administrative efficiency, equity, and (of grave concern) health care outcomes - despite spending far more of its gross domestic product on health care.i

Our healthcare system has impacted care to the detriment of patients. Those with the most knowledge, physicians are spending less time with their patient’s, explaining diagnosis and plan of care too quick to absorb or ask questions. Coordinated care between the primary physician and specialists, not happening as it was. Medical errors, have now a leading cause of death in the United States.ii

It is no longer enough for family advocates to simply be present when their spouse, parent or child is in need of medical care. To be effective, they are discovering they need to navigate our fragmented and complex healthcare system, often during a time of anxiety and stress resulting from a significant change in their loved one’s medical condition or status.

With our healthcare system in its current state, there is a very real need to place health care management back in the hands of the patient. For this very reason, professional patient advocates are in demand.

With knowledge of disease and the system, we are skilled at navigating. We communicate with healthcare providers, clarify diagnoses and conditions and identify health resources and referrals. We speak up about patient (our client’s) rights.

As needed:

We coordinate care everything from reconciling medications, searching for the best option for care management and assuring referrals will be covered by our client’s health insurance.

We sit by our client’s bedside in the hospital to coordinate and oversee transitions of care where “events” are prone to exist.

We stay in touch with the insurance agent to make sure the client is receiving only care that will be paid for.

We assist our clients getting admitted into or discharged from hospitals and coordinate transfers to nursing homes, rehabilitation center, assisted living or home.

As Patient Advocates of Southwest Florida, we are invested in care and outcomes. We objectively help to guide clients in making important decisions based on their choices, wishes, hopes and expectations for treatment and care during the most stressful situations you (or your loved one) will encounter in their life.

i Mirror, Mirror 2021: Reflecting Poorly | Commonwealth Fund. Mirror, Mirror 2021: Reflecting Poorly Health Care in the U.S. Compared to Other High-Income Countries. August 4, 2021.

ii Thomas L. Rodziewcz; Benjamin Houseman; John E Hipskind. Medical Error Reduction and Prevention:01/04/22. Medical Error Reduction and Prevention – StatPearls – NABI Bookshelf (nih.gov).