A doctor is a key healthcare resource to all their patients, current or potential. Because of this, it is very important that the patient feel they can ask anything of that physician. The expectation is that in turn the doctor will respond accurately, timely, and with personableness to every inquiry of the patient. This is not always the case. Many patients feel it is the doctor who they can not easily communicate with.
The situation of healthcare is becoming like many other areas of life; if you have someone there to support you and defend you, your situation will improve. Patients who have an advocate, or someone other than themselves to communicate with the doctor, they receive better and more accurate care. Unfortunately, many patients don't have a relative or friend to be their advocate. This need presents an entreprenuering opportunity. Where there is demand someone will be more than willing to offer supply, but at a price.
This raises the question that if doctors were better screened on a communication level would the need for advocacy decrease? The actual care of the patient may or may not change. But with the communication line opened up patients will feel more taken care of, the doctor will miss less, and complaints of the service being rendered will decrease. So which is less costly to the health care system in the long run? Making communication testing a requirement for licensure or creating advocacy agencies to force communication between doctor and patient?
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Interesting entrepreneurial idea. Question how would an advocate help when at least some of the barriers to good communication are structural, e.g. someone may not want to tell their doctor something because they'll never get health insurance again?
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