Guide. Assist. Serve.
These are just some of the words UTMB patient advocates use to describe the work they do daily across the institution’s campuses and clinics.
Situated within the Patient Services Department, the Patient Advocacy team works in tandem with Ambulatory Services’ patient affairs specialists to ensure that concerns patients and their families have while at UTMB—whether medical or otherwise—are heard and addressed.
Addressing concerns
“Concerns find their way to us in a variety of ways,” said Leslye Mlcak, the manager who oversees the eight-member Patient Advocacy team. “Sometimes we get a call or something is attached to a patient survey. It’s also not uncommon to get walk-ins in our main office in Jennie Sealy Hospital.”
To ensure issues from patients from all UTMB locations—including its four hospital campuses and more than 90 clinics—are addressed, members of the collaborative team divide and conquer by assigning certain regions and areas to specific representatives.
Sigrid Lockett, the administrative coordinator for the team, plays a big role in helping route matters to the right person.
“On a daily basis, I triage callers and walk-in visitors to assess their needs, enter their cases into RL Datix and assign them to the appropriate advocate based on location, whether inpatient or outpatient,” Lockett said.
There are, of course, processes and protocols to follow when documenting, handling, routing and resolving these situations, but it all begins with a genuine desire to help others—a trait and skill so important it’s listed in a typical patient advocate job posting along with other skills such as customer service, critical thinking and de-escalation strategies and techniques.
Problem solving in an empathetic, supportive manner is how Deidra Brantley, patient affairs specialist with the UTMB Primary Care Pavilion in Galveston, explains what she and her colleagues do in these roles.
“We are a neutral party here listening, documenting, investigating and de-escalating,” Brantley explained.
Mlcak reiterates the sentiment that folks on this team are “neutral.”
“We don’t take sides,” she said.
Improving the patient experience
In addition to ensuring patients and visitors are seen and heard, this crew plays an integral role in uncovering opportunities to improve the overall patient experience.
“I love being able to call patients back with outcomes like process improvements,” said Chevas Rainer, patient affairs specialist with the UTMB clinics in the League City Town Center locations.
A great, tangible example of that in action is the extended parking pass option Mlcak and her colleagues developed in partnership with the UTMB Parking Department for patients who will be hospitalized for five days or longer. Valid for 14 days, the pass costs $42, and is a cost-effective alternative to paying the daily parking rate.
Solutions similar to the parking pass are being proposed and explored every day, thanks to the front-line insights and data gathered by members of the team.
And they don’t just wait for the situations and scenarios to find them. The group frequently participates in inpatient rounding, not as a way of soliciting complaints but more to proactively check in on folks just to see how they’re doing. It's a gesture that can go a long way for patients, especially those who may be hospitalized for a long time.
Building bridges
Advocating for patients and their families is a tireless job. In FY22, UTMB had more than 1.5 million outpatient encounters and more than 197,846 hospital patient days. Each of those numbers represents a person cared for by UTMB health care providers, and while staff does everything in its power to ensure everyone leaves happier and healthier than when they arrived, things sometimes go wrong, misunderstandings occur, and emotions sometimes take over—that’s to be expected when in the business of taking care of people and keeping them well.
And that’s why the members of this team are so important.
Equipped with appropriate training, procedures and a calm, compassionate customer-service-first mindset, the patient advocates and patient affairs specialists work together to build a bridge between the patients and families and the UTMB team members working so hard to deliver the care they need when they need it.
Meet the team
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