Patient and Family Advocate - Children's Behavioral Health Center

Position Title:

Patient and Family Advocate - Children's Behavioral Health Center

Department:

Pediatric Behavioral Health IP

Job Description:

A Behavioral Health Patient Advocate acts as a liaison between patients, their families, and healthcare providers to ensure that patients receive the best possible care. This role involves advocating for patients' rights, addressing concerns, and helping navigate the complex healthcare system, particularly in the area of behavioral health.

Essential Responsibilities

Responsibilities listed in this section are core to the position. Inability to perform these responsibilities with or without an accommodation may result in disqualification from the position.

• Provides consultative and direct support to OU Health patients, families, staff and physicians in the capture, review, remediation and reporting of patient and family complaints and grievances.
• Provides oversight and consultative advice to physicians and staff as an expert in patient’s rights and responsibilities and patient complaints and grievances.
• Coordinates the identification, documentation, investigation and resolution of all complaints and grievances in a timely and culturally appropriate manner.
• Consults and collaborates with subject matter experts in various departments including: Quality, Risk, Legal, as well as appropriate nursing and medical staff leaders to address systemic or individual performance issues of a substandard nature.
• Assists staff and physicians in understanding the resolution that is sought and how to best respond to patient/family complaints with respect and caring. Guides other hospital and medical staff in developing acceptable resolutions and following up on outcomes.
• Completes documentation that ensures addressing the essence of each complaint is effective. Documents patient/visitor concerns to include patient demographic data, synopsis of incident, actions taken to resolve, and outcome; inputs into appropriate database.
• Anticipates future performance improvement needs and implements new concepts and methods for improving patient/family experience in anticipation of the changing healthcare environment. Ensures data and information is available to improvement teams throughout the organization directed at addressing chronic patient dissatisfiers.
• Anticipates future performance improvement needs and implements new concepts and methods for improving patient/family experience in anticipation of the changing healthcare environment. Ensures data and information is available to improvement teams throughout the organization directed at addressing chronic patient dissatisfiers.
• Influences unit performance on patient satisfaction metrics by contributing to unit level changes improving quality, safety, and the experience of care for patients and families system-wide.
• Communicates with patients, visitors, physicians, leadership and responds to suggestions and compliments submitted by patients and provides positive reinforcement to involved staff.
• Documents and tracks patient compliments for units/departments and devises a unit specific report card to convey both compliments and issues in an affirmative manner to unit/department staff.
• Ensures more severe situations, particularly those involving ethical, legal, patient rights and risk management issues are communicated effectively to Manager who will assist the Advocate in developing a plan for handling the patient issue and for documenting the issue for sharing with other impacted stakeholders such as AOC, etc.
• Ensures ongoing focus on quality and safety and development of a Patient- and Family-Centered Care culture. Identifies safety risks, develops plans to address those risks, and works to improve the quality of care. Serves and protects the hospital community by adhering to professional standards, hospital policies and procedures, federal, state, and local requirements, and TJC/CMS standards.
• In resolving a patient concern, implements processes that enhances care for other patients; publishes article or presents poster to summarize the project.
• Improves quality results by studying, evaluating, and implementing training to enhance staff interactions and management of patient complaints; teaches methods to improve processes; implements changes.
• Partners with staff, physicians, patients, family and the community to create and implement training to enhance care and exceed outcomes.
• Proactively visits patients who may be at high risk for service related failures such as patients with waits prior to admission to floor, patients who are readmitted unexpectedly less than 2 weeks after previous discharge, etc
• Prevents complaints through proactive interventions to enhance patient experience; works to design interventions with supervisors and managers who see a problem developing; offers suggestions to resolve potential complaints; modifies practices that cause repeated complaints.

General Responsibilities

• Performs other duties as assigned.

Minimum Qualifications

Education Requirements

• Bachelor's Degree required.
   

Experience Requirements

• 3 or more years of experience in a healthcare setting required

License/Certification/Registration Requirements

• Basic Life Support (BLS) - American Heart Association (AHA) upon hire.

• Nonviolent Crisis Intervention - Crisis Prevention Institute (CPI) upon hire.

Knowledge/Skills/Abilities Requirements

• High regard for protecting confidentiality of patient and corporate information.
• Demonstrate strong customer service skills.
• Ability to relate to people of diverse backgrounds, training and experience.
• Able to address difficult, awkward situations with tact and diplomacy.
• Ability to handle highly stressed individuals constructively.
• Excellent interpersonal and negotiating skills with the ability to influence across functional lines required.
• Must be a team player and have proven success applying a team approach to obtain resolution to an issue or successfully accomplish a goal.
• The ability to facilitate groups is highly desirable.
• Computer skills must include proficiency in Microsoft.
• Word, Excel, and Power Point and an ability to rapidly learn job specific applications.
• Ability to work independently.

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OU Health is an equal opportunity employer. We offer a comprehensive benefits package, including PTO, 401(k), medical and dental plans, and many more. We know that a total benefits and compensation package, designed to meet your specific needs both inside and outside of the work environment, create peace of mind for you and your family.