Friday Refresh

May 23, 2025

Thanks for checking out our first week on the Blog! This week the blog sought to start a conversation about searching, sometimes fruitlessly, for the Patient Advocates.

Here’s a refresh on the topic and some relevant questions: Whose job is it to get to know the patient and the patient’s people who will support their care through hospitalization, rehabilitation, and beyond? Can we potentially create more efficiency and better outcomes by having admissions admins point patients and families interested in support and guidance to online tools that can record data? Can the admissions people offer to help them fill out a brief survey about their circumstances and needs (if they want one)? Can trained compassionate individuals working from home review that data quickly and send a Patient Advocate to those who need them the most? Can there be a voicemail or live chat monitored by WFH employees who can put family and patient questions in chats to providers who can follow up? Can we find a way to bring support and compassion in the form of answers and guidance either in-person to the hospital bedside, virtually by video chat or by phone or live chat? Can we better involve the patient’s chosen support person?

How can this work? How is the system standing (or maybe sitting down) in its own way? What are the relevant roadblocks? I’ve been hearing many whispers about how surgeons, hospitals, providers and their offices, rehabs, skilled nursing facilities, and even home health teams get “dings” on their records with readmits, with errors, etc. From online searches it appears that Medicare penalizes the hospital by paying them less when they have “excess readmissions.” I wonder if an advocate could have explained to our family what was going on with the surgical team as they interacted with us and the challenges they were facing so that we could understand one another’s concerns better and come up with a reasonable plan that takes into consideration all factors. There certainly appear to be Managed Care related distractions going on.

Fun Facts about the Founder and Family:

Sandwiched Support was born from an only child’s challenging journey to advocate for both parents as they receive treatment in the post pandemic American Healthcare System, with some encounters more challenging than others, while frequently attempting to find the best way forward. Sometimes blindly she has sought and continues to seek the answers that will lead to compassionate healing (or at least symptom improvement) and higher standards of care for those she cares about and for All. She is in the thick of working motherhood and more (iykyk) and really has no one to truly tag out with when it comes to coming alongside Mom and Dad who graciously accepted the invitation to move into one home together as they face health concerns in their 70s while she continues to raise her children. Her resilient and reliable husband partners with her to, in part, lend a hand and lighten the load and she has what can only be referred to as an amazing network of caring encouragers as she has had the distinct privilege of casting a wide net in seeking support within and outside of her communities over time. In recent months she has been hanging her purse in Mom’s ED room more often than she would like.

Here, it is her greatest goal to help Make it All Make Sense for all of us.

Key Forever Takeaway: There is an amazing retired physician who is my mom’s age and took the time to talk with me on the phone for hours the other day. Among other things she was telling me about Palliative Care (a topic for a future post) and emphatically stated, “If you hear nothing else I say during this conversation, please remember that Palliative Care is not Hospice.” I learned a tremendous amount from sharing a little and listening A Lot during that phone call. If you will allow me now to say to all of you, if you get nothing else out of reading these blog posts, Please remember to Communicate with your loved ones about it all. Start and continue the conversation.