How to Become a Healthcare Advocate feat. Melissa Paige

The Power of Advocacy
Melissa Paige is the co-founder of the Healthcare Advocate Summit. This summit was created to combine everything that Melissa and co-founder Elizabeth Johnson enjoyed about conferences and to include everything they missed in prior conferences. The Healthcare Advocate Summit is full of exciting events, like karaoke, dinner parties, and speaker panels, where advocates can interact with each other, find friends, let their guards down, and relax around other people who understand their roles. 
“A healthcare advocate is anyone [between the patient and physician, who is] on the journey to help a patient get treatment, stay on treatment and afford the treatment or medical device,” explains Melissa Paige in Episode 2 of the That’s Derm Good! podcast.How to fight for yourself (and loved ones)Because anyone can be a healthcare advocate, including yourself for yourself, Melissa created this summit to ensure that all advocates have the tools they need to get proper treatments. 
With a licensed pharmacy tech background, Mesliaa enjoyed working in pharmacies and learning to handle difficult conversations with patients. Melissa Paige explains how she learned to “mirror patients” and gained a deeper empathy for patients. After taking a break from pharmacy to care for a loved one, Melissa discovered another level to being a health care advocate. Melissa explains how biologic coordinators and healthcare advocates do what needs to get done, including hour-long calls to insurance companies to get the medication needed. Melissa has found that most people work in healthcare because they’ve had a personal or family experience that drew them to help others. 
“There’s no rule book about us [biologic coordinators],” explains Melissa Paige in Episode 2 of the That’s Derm Good! podcast. Improve your Advocacy Skills and attend the Healthcare Advocate Summit
To learn more about the Healthcare Advocate Summit or attend, visit https://www.healthcareadvocatesummit.com/. Remember that you are an advocate! Melissa Paige believes that everyone along the journey between patient and physician is a healthcare advocate, so that includes medical social workers, healthcare works within the system, reimbursement managers, independent treatment workers, family members, and office staff are advocates. “I love people. I love people who have challenges and are told ‘no,’ and I can tell them what I’ve done in the past to help them out,” shares Melissa Paige on the That’s Derm Good podcast.

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