patient advocates

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.