Patient Advocacy

What a patient advocate does

Our partnership with our clients includes serving as a guide to the health care system. We help you navigate a course that has you seeing the most appropriate specialists. We attend doctor meetings with you. We help interpret lab and imaging results. And, sometimes most important of all, we get all the specialists talking to each other as a team, with you and your unique health needs as the focus!

Central to our philosophy is gaining an understanding of your treatment goals. We advocate for YOUR goals and add a holistic component that addresses not only safety and health, but also happiness and well-being. We find our older adult clients value quality of life, dignity, and independence. So do we! As a consequence, we make sure your health care providers integrate these values into a person-centered care plan for you.

We are your patient advocate beyond the doctor’s office. We follow you to the hospital, the skilled nursing facility, assisted living, or nursing home, and even check in with home health care. We attend care plan meetings and often facilitate conference calls or video conferencing so that all the players are talking to each other. We make sure important details do not slip between the cracks, which is a challenge for most families during transitions of care and facility admissions!

When you need a patient advocate

Certainly, if you wind up in the Emergency Room, it’s best to have established a relationship with a patient advocate beforehand so they know your medications, your conditions and treatment preferences, and your goals of care. You don’t want to be relaying all the information when you aren’t feeling well or from a stretcher in an ambulance!

A patient advocate is important whenever you have a serious or chronic medical condition or multiple medical conditions. Our role is to help you identify and articulate your goals of care with your physicians and other members of your health care team. We want to be sure you understand the treatment options being offered and that the doctor explains them in light of your goals. A patient advocate makes sure you are fully informed about the pros and cons of each option. It may be that you want to get a second opinion. We help with that. Or perhaps you’d like to explore complementary therapies that can supplement the conventional medical approach.

As your patient advocate, our job is to make sure you receive the care that will most likely allow you to do the things that matter most to you. It’s all about protecting your quality of life and empowering you to make informed choices.

While everyone can benefit from the services of a patient advocate, we have found the health care system is especially difficult for the following:

• Families with a loved one who has dementia. We can take their relative to the doctor, relay family concerns, and then establish routines back at home that will support following the doctor’s orders and help relieve caregiver stress and prevent burnout.
• Clients with complicated, high-acuity medical conditions and/or declining health. They find that our knowledge of the different providers and settings and our emphasis on communication ensure that the treatments suggested support rather than conflict with each other.
• Long-distance family caregivers. If you live a distance from your elderly parents, let us handle the logistics of medical visits. We communicate with you before and after to be sure your concerns are addressed. We can arrange and facilitate virtual family meetings to help with decision making and to keep everyone up to date. Put our decades of medical experience to work for you and save your energy and travel time for the loving activities only a family member can provide.
• Family caregivers with children still at home. Compared to earlier generations, we are having our children later in life, which means it’s very possible that you are still raising your own children while caring for your parents. You are what’s called the “sandwich generation”—caught in the middle with two very important caregiving responsibilities. Let us help you triage. We handle the elder care logistics and partner with you on decisions about parent care so you don’t have to be spread so thin.
• The LGBT community. From inclusive providers to supportive care settings and programs, we walk beside you so you can feel safe and confident you will receive equality of benefits. We will ensure that you, and your partner if you have one, are protected from harassment and differential treatment. We can also support you to work with understanding and sensitive professionals—such as lawyers and financial planners—who can build in safeguards so you and your partner are legally and financially protected.

To support you in receiving comprehensive, quality health care, please give us a call at 302-200-9719.