Patient advocates: How They can Help During and After Hospitalization

Patient advocates:  How They can Help During and After Hospitalization

Patient representatives, also called patient advocates, serve as liaisons between the patient/family and hospital, helping to assure quality of care as well as patient/family satisfaction. Patient advocates work with you to make sure any issue you have is resolved in a timely manner.  If you have concerns about the care being given during a hospital visit, you can always ask for the hospitals’ patient advocate/liaison.  Ways a patient advocate can help: 

• Increase the personalization of care to patients and families
• Strengthen, encourage and facilitate patient and family dialogue with their healthcare team
• Provide a personal and impartial means of communicating patient and family  expectations, needs, requests and concerns to the healthcare providers
• Communicate the hospital's policies and procedures to the patient and family
• Identify potential patient, family, or visitor concerns or suggestions and direct them to the right resource
• Seek information for the patient and provide that information in easy-to-understand language
• Work with various departments in resolving patient concerns, tracking concerns, analyzing data to identify opportunities for improvement and to facilitate change
• Intervene and collaborate with hospital staff to assure privacy and confidentiality rights are protected 

Encourage guardians and staff to ask questions and make sure they feel comfortable with the information being given and if they aren’t, they can always ask for the patient advocate to intervene. If your concerns occur after the individual has been discharged, it’s not too late to voice those concerns. Anyone can file a complaint on behalf of the individual to the patient advocate. They will take the complaint and forward it to the appropriate director/supervisor for review. If the complaint warrants further review, it will go before a panel of physicians/nursing leaders. If you do not have access to their medical information, the hospital will not be able to send any follow up to you due to HIIPA, however, rest assured they do take complaints seriously and each complaint must be resolved within 30 days of the filed grievance. It’s never wrong to question the care being given to ourselves, family or those that we serve! 
From IPMG News