Patient Advocate

Westchester Medical Center • Kingston, NY

1d

About The Position

As a member of the Patient Experience team, the Patient Advocate serves as a liaison between patients, families, visitors, and WMCHealth. The role helps ensure patient-centered care complies with local, state, and federal regulatory guidelines and reflects the organization’s mission, vision, and goals. Based at Health Alliance Hospital, the position supports the Northern region of the WMCHealth network and reports to the Regional Director, Patient Experience.

The Patient Advocate ensures high-quality advocacy services, upholds patients’ rights as outlined in the Patient Bill of Rights, and supports effective complaint management, grievance resolution, and service recovery. The work is highly sensitive and confidential. Supervision is not a regular responsibility of this role.

Requirements

• Six or more years of experience focused on patient experience and/or customer service.
• A master’s or bachelor’s degree in nursing, counseling, advocacy, or a related healthcare discipline.
• Superior customer-service and communication skills, with an emphasis on de-escalation.
• Conversance with current evidence-based best-practice advocacy standards, research, and competencies in patient advocacy.
• Proven problem-solving skills and the ability to make effective decisions while understanding and supporting the needs of patients and hospital management.
• Ability to establish and maintain effective working relationships with a wide variety of professionals and clinical staff.
• Ability to handle and safeguard confidential information.
• Ability to cope with stress.
• Ability to read, write, speak, understand, and communicate in English sufficiently to perform the essential duties of the position.
• Sound professional judgment, maturity, empathy, keen sensitivity, flexibility, and dependability.

Nice To Haves

• Bilingual competency.

Responsibilities

• Coordinate family meetings, including meetings with clinical teams, to address concerns about diagnosis, special needs, the plan of care, and treatment options.
• Round on patients and communicate patient and family concerns, complaints, and grievances to clinical teams.
• Conduct rounds on readmitted patients with prior complaint or grievance issues and connect their expectations and perspectives with the care team.
• Refer cases to the medical ethics committee when consultation is necessary.
• Participate in meetings involving disclosure to patients or families about clinical matters, including cause of death or medical interventions.
• Lead investigations of patient and family complaints and grievances by reviewing relevant information and meeting with appropriate staff and managers about hospital care and services.
• Maintain proficiency in Patient Rights, HCAHPS, and other regulatory requirements, and educate others when requested.
• Facilitate comfort care to palliative medical services when appropriate.
• Educate patients and caregivers about HIPAA.
• Work with patients, families, and guardians of special-needs populations to assess individualized needs throughout hospitalization.
• Perform related tasks to support effective and efficient service delivery.
• Coordinate with WMCHealth Patient Experience colleagues to support compliance with hospital policies concerning Patient Rights, Language Services, Complaints and Grievances, Visitation, and Service Animals.
• Assist with creating reports and dashboards for committee and board reports as needed.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time