{"id":349,"date":"2012-03-08T05:35:00","date_gmt":"2012-03-08T05:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jhwlawoffice.com\/nevada-workers-comp-law-blog\/?p=349"},"modified":"2020-01-29T14:24:22","modified_gmt":"2020-01-29T14:24:22","slug":"patient-advocate-a-necessity-if-you-are-hospitalized","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jhwlawoffice.com\/nevada-workers-comp-law-blog\/2012\/03\/articles\/benefits\/medical-care\/patient-advocate-a-necessity-if-you-are-hospitalized\/","title":{"rendered":"Patient Advocate a Necessity If You Are Hospitalized"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"150\" height=\"144\" align=\"left\" src=\"Documents and SettingsvhuntDesktopMC900071362.JPG\" alt=\"\" \/>Most injured workers who call me for advice are frustrated with poor medical care or problems obtaining good care as a result of insurance issues. <span>&nbsp;&nbsp;Making sure that injured workers get the best possible medical care is what I do for a living, so I didn&rsquo;t need a personal experience to convince me how important a patient advocate is when a person is ill and hospitalized.&nbsp;Nonetheless, last month I personally got a huge dose myself of bad medicine and lousy insurance practices when I was unexpectedly hospitalized.&nbsp;During my brief (thankfully) hospital stay, the following occurred:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span><span>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <\/span><\/span>A typographical error in a CT scan report wasn&rsquo;t caught until after I was given IV medication for another serious condition I did not have.&nbsp;<\/li>\n<li><span><span>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <\/span><\/span>I was medicated and then strapped to a gurney and transported at midnight against my wishes to another medical facility from the hospital.&nbsp;My condition was actually worse when I was released from the hospital. This happened without any notification to my family.<\/li>\n<li><span><span>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <\/span><\/span>I was lied to by a doctor as to whether a prescribed IV antibiotic could be given at home as opposed to at the dirty secondary facility my insurance company supposedly required for another week.<\/li>\n<li><span><span>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <\/span><\/span>I was denied access to my own medical records for several hours while administrators grappled with what the law and their own policy says about patients&rsquo; rights to review their own records.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>These &nbsp;occurred during a 72-hour period when I was too sick to demand that I speak to insurance adjusters and hospital administrators. Fortunately, I have two highly-trained and very loyal legal assistants who stepped up to make sure that nothing worse happened to me.<span>&nbsp;&nbsp; When I was able to talk and demand better care for myself from my insurance company and from medical providers, things changed significantly for the better.&nbsp;&nbsp; <\/span><\/p>\n<p>At a minimum, if you or a family member need hospitalization, have someone go with&nbsp;you who can act as a patient advocate. That person should be comfortable &nbsp;with asking a lot of questions, particularly during check-in and discharge.&nbsp;&nbsp;Make sure that your advocate has a list of medications you take daily.&nbsp;Give the phone number of this person to hospital personnel and ask that this person be contacted if you are moved or scheduled for a surgical procedure.&nbsp;Bring a cell phone and a charger with you so that you have easy contact with your advocate and family. Bring a small notebook so that you can keep notes and write down important phone numbers.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Do not be intimidated, and be persistent in getting answers to your questions as to what is happening to you.&nbsp;Make sure that you understand what treatment you are getting, what medications you are being given, and who ordered them for&nbsp;you. &nbsp;Do not assume that people know what they are doing.&nbsp;&nbsp;Finally, bring a huge bottle of hand sanitizer with you. The <a href=\"http:\/\/ http:\/\/www.aarp.org\/health\/doctors-hospitals\/\">AARP Bulletin<\/a>, March 2012, has frightening statistics on the number of people who are victims of hospital mistakes, and what else you can do to protect yourself when hospitalized.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Most injured workers who call me for advice are frustrated with poor medical care or problems obtaining good care as a result of insurance issues. &nbsp;&nbsp;Making sure that injured workers get the best possible medical care is what I do for a living, so I didn&rsquo;t need a personal experience to convince me how important &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/jhwlawoffice.com\/nevada-workers-comp-law-blog\/2012\/03\/articles\/benefits\/medical-care\/patient-advocate-a-necessity-if-you-are-hospitalized\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Patient Advocate a Necessity If You Are Hospitalized<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[114,156,264,320,321,370],"class_list":["post-349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-medical-care","tag-advocate","tag-care","tag-hospitalization","tag-medical","tag-medical-care","tag-patient"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jhwlawoffice.com\/nevada-workers-comp-law-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jhwlawoffice.com\/nevada-workers-comp-law-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jhwlawoffice.com\/nevada-workers-comp-law-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jhwlawoffice.com\/nevada-workers-comp-law-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jhwlawoffice.com\/nevada-workers-comp-law-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=349"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/jhwlawoffice.com\/nevada-workers-comp-law-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1580,"href":"https:\/\/jhwlawoffice.com\/nevada-workers-comp-law-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349\/revisions\/1580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jhwlawoffice.com\/nevada-workers-comp-law-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jhwlawoffice.com\/nevada-workers-comp-law-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jhwlawoffice.com\/nevada-workers-comp-law-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}