The Blog is Back!
After several months absence–and many wonderful developments–I am resuming the Healthcare Liaison Blog! It was a very busy fall…
Healthcare Liaison is expanding the 2010 locations for for its popular two-day workshop “Becoming a Healthcare Advocate: 11 Steps to a New Career in Healthcare”. These workshops are open to consumers, professional healthcare advocates, those teaching in the field and policy and legislative interests. We have new locations!
SEATTLE, WA–January 30 and 31st
BERKELEY, CA–February 27th and 28th
TUCSON, AZ–March 20th and 21st
BOSTON, MA–May 1st and 2nd
The links will take you to the brochure describing the workshop and you can complete payment on-line with a credit card or PayPal. There are still spaces in the Seattle workshop and registrants are eligible for a referral bonus when they “bring a friend”.
In other major news, we have a professional organization! I founded the organization, the National Association of Healthcare Advocacy Consultants, in July 2009 and am now the President of NAHAC for 209-2010. You can read about the Association and join at NAHAC
In November 2009 the newly-formed National Association of Healthcare Advocacy Consultants held its First Annual Conference! NAHAC currently has 62 members and membership is open to everyone: professional advocates, consumers, academicians and policy and legislative participants. Members who were not able to attend the conference can listen to the podcast on the web site and hear workshops on case studies, HIPAA for advocates, insurance-made-understandable and more. to join: NAHAC.
We are holding our second annual Conference in Washington DC in November 2010. Join NAHAC to get the details as soon as they’re released!
Early Registration closes October 15th….
The newly formed National Association of Healthcare Advocacy Consultants has put together a wonderful First Annual Conference in Berkeley for next month, on November 14th and 15th. Come hear these presenters:
Ann Tardy, Founder, LifeMoxie; Keynote Presenter: “The New World of Healthcare Advocacy — Creating It Together!”
Jeff Belkora, PhD, Director of Decision Services and Assistant Professor of Surgery in the Institute for Health Policy Studies, U.C.S.F.: “Making Good Decisions in a Family Health Crisis”
Linda Garrett, Partner, Risk Management Services: “Confidentiality and Privacy Law for Healthcare Advocates”
Gail Gazelle, MD, Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School: “Inside the Doctor’s Mind: What Every Advocate Needs to Know”
Maggie Radany, RN, Founder, Radany & Associates: “How to Solve Health Insurance Problems and Be a Hero to Your Clients!”
Dianne Savastano, Founder & President, Healthassist: “Bringing Bob Home: A Case Study in Patient Advocacy”
Elisabeth Schuler Russell, Founder & President, Patient Navigator LLC: “Inside the World of Pediatric Healthcare Advocacy”
Judith Stark, Principal, Judith Stark Consulting: “Harnessing the Power of Technology Solutions for Healthcare Warriors”.
To register, go to www.nahac.com. Early registration (at the reduced rate of $150 for NAHAC members and $200 for non-members) ends October 15th. After Oct. 15th the rates will be $200 for NAHAC members and $250 for non-members.
First Annual Conference of the National Association of Healthcare Advocacy Consultants
As interim President of the National Association of Healthcare Advocacy Consultants (NAHAC) , I am pleased to announce the First Annual NAHAC Conference. It will be held at the University of California, Berkeley on November 14th and 15th 2009 at the Clark Kerr Campus. This two day event features talented and skilled practitioners in the field of Healthcare Advocacy. The event is open to the public as well as Association members.
To view the conference brochure and register for the Conference go here.
To receive the 25% Conference discount for members of NAHAC, please join the Association and complete your membership payment before registering and paying for the Conference event.
We look forward to seeing you in Berkeley!
Healthcare Advocacy Workshop in October
Becoming a Private Healthcare Advocate
11 Steps to a New Career in Healthcare
Healthcare Liaison is presenting a workshop for healthcare professionals who would like to be trained in private healthcare advocacy and for consumers who need health care guidance.
The Beautiful Clark Kerr Campus of UC Berkeley
Google Map for Clark Kerr Campus
October 17th & 18th, 2009
Clark Kerr Campus
Berkeley, CA
Workshop Daily Schedule
8:30 a.m. check in and coffee
9:00 a.m. workshop begins
noon-1 p.m. lunch (on your own)
4:30 p.m. workshop ends
For detailed brochure and to register on-line, please go to www.healthcareliaison.com/workshops
Understanding the Mysteries of Medicare
Need help with Medicare? It’s a complicated system to understand, especially when you’re first enrolling. Join me in at a workshop in Portland, Oregon September 12th to learn and understand how it works. The text of the flyer follows:
Read the complete post >>>
National Association Formed
I am very pleased to announce the formation of the National Association of Healthcare Advocacy Consultants (NAHAC, www.nahac.com), the organization, as it says on the web page, “dedicated to improving the consumer healthcare experience.” Why NAHAC and why now?
Read the complete post >>>
National Association of Healthcare Advocacy Consultants
A frequent occurrence: the phone rings, and a desperate voice on the other end of the line says “I need to find an advocate and I came across your website, but you’re not in my area. Do you know anyone in my state who does what you do?” Up until now, there was no central Association that consumers could go to if they wanted to find an advocate. There will be, effective August 1, 2009.
Read the complete post >>>
Web Sites That Can Help
How do you find medicine at a lower cost? Where can you go to find out what clinical trials are being done for particular condition? What if you have an ill child and you want to find a support group? These are some of the questions Healthcare Liaison is asked every day. We thought it would be helpful to give you some leads on good sites that answer some of these questions.
Read the complete post >>>
A Medical Home: So New It’s Old
One of my new clients wistfully said the other day, “I wish there was someone at UCSF (University of California, San Francisco Medical Center) who was in charge of me: someone who knows me and refers me to specialists when I need it and then talks to those specialists about what they found out.”
This client was expressing a feeling often voiced by my clients: there is “no one there” to look after them, no one who is looking at the big picture. In fact, this is a common complaint of clients being treated at major medical centers: who is in charge of all my care? What he realized in the subsequent discussion was that Healthcare Liaison creates that system for him, and that he had found his “Medical Home”. A good healthcare advocate does exactly that: in a complex medical world, we create the “Medical Home”.
The concept of “Medical Home” is not a new concept. In the era of medicine that pre-dated the rise of specialty practices, there was a medical home with the family doctor. If someone needed to see a specialist, the family doctor referred them and was in close communication with that specialist and continued to provide the overall care. If you asked someone “who’s your doctor?”, they could easily answer that question.
With the rise in specialty practices, the picture became less clear. You could go see a specialist for a particular problem, but maybe that specialist was outside of the regular group practice that you used. Would the information from the specialist get back to your primary care (“regular”) doctor?
With Medical Home, we go back to the original design: there would be a primary care physician (and office) that would effectively manage a person’s care, contacting specialists, getting updates and keeping the big picture in place.While the concept is very appealing, there are some major structural changes that would need to happen in physician’s practices to make this an effective practice:
1. The standard primary care physician will not have the time him or herself–and it will not be cost effective–to do all of the follow-up that needs to happen; the office will need to hire nurses or medical social workers to accomplish this–and that will be costly.
2. Finding qualified personnel to do this kind of care will be difficult: there is currently a shortage of both nurses and medical social workers;
3. The question of whether insurance will reimburse for these services has yet to be decided;
5. The electronic medical records systems are not yet sophisticated enough for all primary care physicians and specialists to be able to communicate seamlessly with each other.
As a concept of providing care, Medical Home is exciting–and so new, it’s old!
When Nighttime is Daytime
There is a remarkable program for people with dementia recently featured today in the New York Times. It offers a night program at the Hebrew Home at Riverdale. People with dementia often become active–and stressed– as day turns to evening. Participants in this program come at the end of the day and have a program of activities designed to help calm then and allow them to safely do activities–and give their families the opportunity to sleep through the night, knowing their family member is well and safely cared for. Follow this link to read about this remarkable program: All-Night Care for Dementia’s Restless Minds