Advocacy that Matters

Coming into NHC, I had certain expectations of what I would be doing to help people access healthcare, but none of them even slightly compared to the real experience.

I currently serve at the Stephen Klein Wellness Center as a Patient Support Specialist. Much of my time is spent connecting patients with specialty care. Patients come in for appointments at varying stages of their illness, and sometimes the severity of their condition necessitates an urgent visit with a specialist. However, the problem occurs when, despite the patient’s condition, specialist offices don’t accommodate the patient’s needs, such being willing to explain procedure details over the phone or providing appointment times during the patient’s availability. This is when the patient needs someone to advocate on their behalf. 

I remember the first time I really had to be an advocate. The patient was an elderly deaf man, and it was his first time at Stephen Klein Wellness Center. After evaluating him, the provider referred him immediately to vascular and vision specialists. Because he was deaf, we assumed he was versed in American Sign Language (ASL). After contacting the specialist offices to make the necessary appointments and ensure ASL translation would be available, I emailed the patient to update him on his new appointments. It was then that he told me he could not understand ASL and that he has been communicating through a computer since he became deaf. Now knowing all aspects of the patient’s background, I attempted to reschedule his appointments with proper interpretation, and this was when everything started to fall apart.

As soon as I contacted the offices to explain the accommodations the patient needed, the schedulers quickly told me the patient could not be seen there. They repeated again and again that the doctors did not have the time to type out every question and wait for the patient to type back a response.

“They are very busy,” the schedulers insisted. “If he needs this much help, he needs to look into getting an aide.”

Understanding that this was financially impossible for the patient, I realized that if I didn’t do everything in my power to press the specialist care clinics to find resources for this patient, he would never be treated for his illnesses. Collaborating with my supervisor, the providers, and the Vice President of Healthcare Services, I spent most of that week going back and forth between multiple offices and the clinic to arrange all the services the patient needed. We had to continually contact people to make sure they were finding the correct interpretation and insist that the offices find the resources to accommodate the patient, all while the specialist offices tried to urge us and the patient to look for other locations or even not see a specialist at all.

Currently, we have one of the specialist appointments arranged and are still in the process of  making an appointment with a vascular specialist for the patient. Despite the incredibly difficult and time consuming nature of this process, it has taught me a great deal about the power of advocacy and how much good we as NHC members do for the communities in which we serve.

^{Photo source: University of Nebraska: Services for Students with Disabilities
http://www.unl.edu/ssd/content/interpreting-and-transcription-services-d...}

This blog post was written by NHC Philadelphia member Lavanya Easwaran.
Lavanya serves as a Patient Support Specialist at Project HOME: Stephen Klein Wellness Center.