This post was published at, and has been shared by the APHA Blog.
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 the entire post at the end of this excerpt.
What Does a Patient Advocate Do?
That’s a good question — what does a patient advocate do? And there are a handful of answers, depending on the kind of help you need. Some advocates help you with insurance claims, or review your hospital bills. Others might sit with you at home while you convalesce, or help you understand a difficult diagosis and an extended list of treatment options. In fact, there’s a long list of services patients or health advocates might provide. Most of these are simple to understand, because this kind of help has actually been around for awhile. The type of patient advocacy that seems most confusing – but can have the biggest impact on your positive medical outcomes – are medical / navigational advocates. These advocates will sit with you in the doctor’s office and ask questions, or will help you make a difficult medical decision, or will sit at your bedside to monitor your hospital care, to be sure you get the right drugs, or don’t acquire an infection. Here’s a metaphor to help you better understand why this is important: Fifty years ago, if you wanted to buy a house, you found someone willing to sell, and the two of you worked out all the details. If you needed a mortgage, you got it. If you needed a lawyer to draw up the deed, then you hired one. But over the years, particularly as credit problems started to arise and the legal requirements got tougher, we began to see real estate brokers establish an expertise as the go-between – between the seller and the buyer. These brokers have a much larger bank of knowledge than someone who only buys or sells a home two or three times in a lifetime. They understand the process, know home values, mortgage options, negotiation – they know far more about everything related to the transaction of buying or selling a home than most of us do. Today, very few home transactions take place without a real estate broker to orchestrate them. Unfortunately, the healthcare system (no matter what country you live in) has become so…