Patient Advocate

Overview

The Patient Experience Advocate supports, and enhances, the patient experience by proactively acting on the patient/families behalf. The Patient Experience Advocate assures that concerns or perceptions about quality of care and/or service, delivered by any member of the UF Health Shands team, are heard in a timely fashion, and addressed appropriately. The Patient Experience Advocate will achieve this by investigating, resolving, documenting and reporting organizational-specific patient, family, and visitor compliments, complaints, and grievances. The Patient Experience Advocate will develop, implement, and participate in patient experience initiatives related to the Hospital. The Patient Experience Advocate will serve as a trusted and informal information resource, communication channel facilitator, consultant and practitioner for dispute resolution. The Patient Experience Advocate will seek fair and equitable solutions to patient-care giver problems, will suggest dispute resolution processes for addressing and managing conflicts, and provide input to unit and departmental Managers on policy, procedural and practice changes to maintain patient rights. The Patient Advocate promotes effective relationships/communication between patients and caregivers.

Qualifications

Education requirements: 

• Bachelor's degree in a healthcare, business or a related field is required. 
• Five years of verifiable experience as a Patient Advocate in an academic health center will be considered in lieu of the degree requirement.

The following core competencies are required:

• 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 angry people constructively, a high energy level.
• 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. 

The following experience or knowledge is highly desirable:

• Three years of recent experience in an acute care hospital facility; knowledge of CMS CoP regulations and The Joint Commission standards for patient complaints and grievances; medical terminology; knowledge of service improvement methodologies.
• Computer skills must include proficiency in Microsoft Word, Excel, and Power Point and an ability to rapidly learn job specific applications

Employees in this position: Will not operate vehicles for an assigned business purpose NOTE: A frequent driver is defined as one who uses his/her personal or Shands automobile a) at least once daily, b) at least five individual trips per week or c) drives, on average, over 150 miles per week in the performance of his/her job.