#theVIPexperience Post #127: Julia Reichley

 Volunteering with Crossroad Health Center made barriers to healthcare more personal. You

can’t fully understand the challenges a patient in an underserved community faces until you are

alongside them, experiencing the setbacks and obstacles that come forth with scheduling and attending

a doctor’s appointment. Before the appointment can be scheduled, you need to consider applying for

financial aid. After the appointment is scheduled, you need to apply for transportation. All of which can

take a stressful amount of time and energy even if you know where to start and can ultimately deter a

patient from scheduling and/or attending a referral appointment.

As a future health care provider, being aware of these deterrents is crucial to the overall quality

of patient care. Each population is going to have its unique challenges, and it is important that these are

neither overlooked nor denied, but actively confronted. Communication and teamwork are important

when advocating for a patient over a long span of time. For example, myself and fellow volunteers were

scheduling for a patient with chronic plaque psoriasis. Insurance denied coverage of her biologic on the

first and second glance, but when I called the insurance company, they discovered that the ICD-10 code

in their system was incorrect. I was able to communicate the corrected code over the phone and by the

end of the conversation, her biologic was approved for coverage. I was on the phone for 30 minutes

with the insurance company and spent almost 10 minutes on hold and that was only a part of the

referral process. Patient advocacy doesn’t start and end in the doctor’s office, but rather its continuous.

And because it is continuous, it is always personal.