Patient Advocate: A Cutting Edge Health Career
Saturday January 19, 2008
If you're looking for a way to significantly impact the lives of patients, in a way that doesn't necessarily require med school or nursing school, patient advocacy is a newly emerging field which may interest you. As a patient advocate, you don't actually treat patients or directly administer health care, but the role of patient advocate could be equally as important to the patients' outcomes.
Patient advocates assist the patient in acquiring the highest quality, most accurate health care available to them, navigating the red tape and sometimes overwhelming bureaucracy of our nation's health care system. This includes dealing with the three primary players in the healthcare system: providers (physicians), payers (insurance companies), and the hospitals. If you're interested in learning more, Trisha Torrey is the resident expert and Guide to Patient Empowerment and Advocacy at About.com, and she provides further details about this exciting, relatively new career in the health care industry.
Cheers, and Happy Health Careers!
There needs to be more info out there. I am very interested in becoming a patient advocate. The problem is what do I go to school for? What do I choose for my major course of study?
I couldn’t agree with you more, Alexandra! There doesn’t seem to be a lot of information out there about this line of work. If the information I have already is accurate, I am sure I would be great in this field.
My main question is where the salary or pay would come from. I have been one for both my husband, who passed away 3 years ago from stomach cancer, and now my mother, who is batteling cancer as well. The hospitals are interested in covering their bases as is the insurance industry. They have no interest in any patient getting the services and payments they deserve if it puts them out. I have done social work for 5 years and know how messed up the system is. There is absolutely no communication between agencies and I have yet to see one social worker from Moffitt do anything to help get services.
So where do I go to start this business or enter this field?
Alexandria, Howie and Gladys — you are all right — patient advocacy is a potentially great career field with very little info available. I’ve addressed what I can on my Patient Empowerment site here at About.com as Andrea mentioned in her post. You can help patients navigate the system, or help them clean up their hospital bills, or even drive them to doctors appointments or more.
There are some courses out there, and you can start your own business, too:
Patient Advocacy Programs: Degrees, Certificates and Instruction
Start a Patient Advocacy Business
Stop by the Patient Empowerment site for more information.
check out this website for educational information.
http://www.miami.edu/hca