This post has been shared by the AdvoConnection Blog. It was written with a patient-client audience in mind, but might be useful to you, too.
It is provided so you can find it in a search here at myAPHA.org, but you’ll need to link to the original post to read it in its entirety. Find the link to that post at the end of the excerpt.
What’s the Difference Between Hospital Patient Advocates and Independent Advocates?
Francine reports: After my husband Leonard had surgery last week, he stayed in the hospital four more days. I stayed by his side as much as I could and waited every day for the surgeon to check on him. I had a million questions! But I never saw the surgeon again once the surgery was over. I waited patiently for the first day after the surgery. No surgeon. I called the surgeon’s office and they would not make an appointment for me, or even promise he would return my call, because it was my husband who had the surgery; they told me I would just have to hope to catch him when he visited my husband, which he would do once each day my husband was in the hospital. I asked the nurses when the surgeon would come by. They told me he stops in every morning around 6 AM. So I got to the hospital by 5:45 – and they told me I had just missed him. I would give the hospital nurses my questions and they would give them to the surgeon, but I never got the answers. Finally, the nurses suggested I go see the hospital’s patient advocate and tell her I wanted to see the surgeon – so I did. She was very pleasant, and tried to be helpful. She told me she would try to get the surgeon to contact me but that he had a reputation for avoiding patients’ family members. No promises. And still no surgeon. I am furious! I was never able to get my questions answered, and now my husband has an appointment for follow up – and I don’t know how I’ll keep my mouth shut when we get to the appointment! He has had all kinds of problems since the surgery, and I don’t feel as if he got the care he needed because I wasn’t allowed to ask questions. Unfortunately, Francine’s story is repeated hundreds (or thousands) of times a day. The details vary from patient to patient, but the part we’re going to focus on here is – how helpful could the hospital’s patient advocate be? And what could Francine have done differently? In recent years, hospitals have begun stepping up their games to improve the patient’s hospital experience because Medicare’s rules changed, tying patient satisfaction to hospital revenue. I have my own opinions on how they…