insurance

February 5 2016

Re-Establishing Patient Advocates

Relentless Advance Advocacy consumers, Doogie Howser MD, insurance, patient advocates, teletherapy 0

One summer I watched Doogie Howser MD on Hulu. When the mother became a patient advocate at the same hospital that Doogie worked at, I suddenly knew what I wanted to do. Unfortunately when I began graduate school, hospitals were cutting their patient advocates and there weren’t any real hospital internships available.

Nowadays, patient advocates are becoming case managers for health insurance companies. There is a lot of news coverage recently about social workers and insurance companies trying to work together to fight opioid addictions.

Personally I couldn’t work directly for an insurance company. I wouldn’t want to feel like I was in any way pressured to limit services or coverage. I applaud the people that can work as case managers for insurance companies. I’d rather be on the policy advocacy side and trying to explain why services are needed. I also couldn’t see myself blending in to customer service staff where most of my work would be communicating with clients over the phone. I think it helps to know more about clients even if it is observational.

Patient Advocates: The Coach in Your Corner for Taking on the Health Care System

January 25 2016

Behavioral Treatment Modalities

Relentless Advance Advocacy behavioral health, dhs, healthcare, insurance, MN, modalities, WI 0

I’ve been doing research on approved behavioral treatment models for WI Medicaid. I was one of the first kids on Katie Beckett in Wisconsin. When I had to transition from youth services to adult services they told me my birth defects weren’t covered in their system. So I guess I was magically cured and nothing else needed to be done with the craniofacial interventions.

Anyways, it took quite the effort to find WI’s approved treatment modalities. When I searched for MN’s, it took a whopping ten minutes. And then to see that MN and WI approved some modalities that are different. But the reason that they are approved models are because they have evidence-based research and practice to show that they are effective. So I find it odd that there would be differences between the two states’ approved behavioral treatment models.

I also find it interesting that MN tackled this shift in its health care coverage before WI. It seems like lately, a lot of social program changes in WI are inspired by MN actions.