LIVINGWELL IN THE NEWS
Loved one sick with Covid-19? A patient advocate can help.
By The Washington Post
June 2020
“With the novel coronavirus, many families need help more than ever. If a loved one is isolated in a hospital with covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, or locked down in a senior community, don’t assume that there’s nothing you can do to make sure they get the best possible care, says Barbara Abruzzo, a registered nurse and patient advocate who runs Livingwell Care Navigation in New York City. Instead, families should seize some control…”
Establish communications links to get information about the patient’s condition, complications, progress and prognosis. This requires a health-care proxy. Without that, unless you’re the patient’s legal spouse or parent, nurses and doctors are unlikely to give you much medical information. Abruzzo recommends downloadable proxies offered by the nonprofit Five Wishes (fivewishes.org) for $5.
Visit virtually. If the patient doesn’t have a smartphone and charging cable, or didn’t take one to the hospital, arrange for one.
If feasible, move a loved one out of elder housing. Seniors are most vulnerable to this disease. If you can transfer them to their own house or your house with home health-care professionals, do it.
Patient Advocates: Expanding the Landscape of Patient and Family Support
By The Beryl Institute
July 2019
“One common offering of independent patient advocates is research. Research is a broad task encompassing exploration into all kinds of things. Barbara Abruzzo, President and Founder of Livingwell Care Navigation creates value for her clients by performing due diligence on renowned surgeons, sometimes from around the world, so her clients can have a choice of receiving a second and third opinion to ensure they receive the absolute best care possible. Abruzzo’s due diligence includes research on a doctor’s medical school and specialized fellowships. She looks into whether the doctor is a clinical professor and up-to-date in his/ her field of practice, what she refers to as “being on the cutting-edge.”
“Coordination of care and acting as an intermediary between patients, families and providers are also among the primary service offerings of independent advocates, according to our panel. “The need is high,” comments Abruzzo, who remarks about our current healthcare environment. “Making sure the right hand knows what the left hand is doing…it’s really a problem in our system,” she says. According to Abruzzo, the best outcomes are those where the patient can function as his/her own advocate. Most often, though, people don’t have that ability. They don’t have the skillset or perhaps the person is too ill. Abruzzo gives an example of the value of care coordination services by saying, “If you're going to a physician, and you're not saying, ‘Well, I saw my neurologist last week, and this is what he said, and this is what he did,’ it's never going to go on your record with your PCP. Each doctor needs to know what the other physicians are doing in order to have coordination of care. Physicians frequently say to me how helpful it is to them to have me as a member of the team.”
“Questions I always ask are: Who else is involved? Should we get them on a conference call?” said Abruzzo. “I've been doing this a long time and I know that if everybody isn't on the same page, things are not going to move forward.”
Insisting on Thorough Care
by Jeff Blyskal
April 2020 – Checkbook.org
“Often navigators are called in during emergencies. For example, Barbara Abruzzo, RN, founder and president of Livingwell Care Navigation, based in New York City, explains how she sprang into action after she got a call last year from a woman whose husband had suffered severe multiple head and body trauma in a serious motorcycle crash and had wound up in a hospital with a poor reputation for patient safety.
Within four hours, Abruzzo secured admission for the patient into the burn unit of a top area trauma center, where he received expert, safe care. After three weeks, the hospital said the patient’s condition had improved enough for him to be discharged home. But Abruzzo called a family meeting to reassess the situation with the physicians in charge of the burn unit and surgical ICU, the doctor in charge of pain management, the occupational and physical therapists, and others.
Abruzzo’s previous 20-year career as a medical decision support specialist and critical care nurse in a hospital intensive care unit gave her the expertise and gravitas that the doctors respected, but which most patients and families lack.
That team decided to keep the patient in hospital for two more weeks, before discharging him to short-term rehab for another two weeks, she says. That gave the man’s wife time to convert a first-floor den in their house into a bedroom and make a downstairs half-bath a handicap-accessible full bathroom, as he could not climb stairs.”
Who is the Patient Advocate?
By Megan Headley
December 4, 2018 ‐ PSQH
“I was a critical care nurse. I know what doctors want to hear first, second, and third. Patients want to go into a story and physicians stop listening,” points out Barbara Abruzzo, founder and president of Livingwell Health Advisory in New York.”
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