The Role of Patient Advocacy at the Health Centers

Coming up on four months of service as a patient advocate at Health Centers 3 and 4 in West Philly, the role I play within the function of the Health Centers has become more apparent. As a patient advocate with the prescription assistance program (PAP), I am responsible for helping uninsured or minimally insured patients get access to essential medications. I meet with patients to see if they qualify for prescription assistance programs that are offered through a number of pharmaceutical companies and help them apply for these programs. Though it sounds relatively simple, coordinating correspondence between patients, providers, and pharmaceutical companies is often challenging. Patient’s schedules do not always align with my schedule at the Health Centers making it difficult to find time to meet and complete applications. Pharmaceutical companies are often changing their requirements for their assistance programs meaning a patient who qualified for a program last year, may no longer qualify for the upcoming year. 

While these challenges are sometimes frustrating, I remind myself that if I am not the one listening to the repetitive hold music for hours while waiting to speak to a pharmaceutical representative, the patient would have to do it instead. If I am not the one looking up if medications have assistance programs and if a patient qualifies or not, the providers would have use their limited time between patients to do it. While the work that I do may not be the most challenging, it is often time consuming and as I have learned over the last four months of service, in healthcare, time is a limited resource. When I was first being introduced to the staff and providers at Health Center 3 in late August, several providers told me they were excited I was there and that they needed me after a couple weeks where no one was there to cover for my role. A couple months later, a provider stopped to tell me how much time my work saves her daily and how she “wouldn’t be able to get any work done” without me. These instances remind me that the work I do is not only beneficial to the patients I serve but also to the overall efficiency of the Health Center, making it easier for providers to focus on their patients and allowing them to provide better care to all.

Recently, I have also been helping apply referred patients to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in addition to my prescription assistance work. Along with other smaller projects, my work, and the work of the five other NHC patient advocates, has enabled the eight Health Centers across Philadelphia to increase the reach of their services and ensure that more patient needs are being met while also improving the experiences of both patients and providers at the Health Centers.