Learning to Be a Stronger Patient Advocate: Krista Hughes

CEO of Hughes Advocacy, Birmingham, Alabama

Show notes: ⁠https://www.markgraban.com/mistake40⁠

My guest for Episode #40 is ⁠Krista Hughes⁠, the CEO of her company ⁠Hughes Advocacy⁠, a private patient advocacy firm that helps patients and their families navigate the health care system and get the best medical care possible.

She has over 25 years of experience working in the medical industry for Fortune 500 Companies like Cardinal Health.   She has also worked for CareFusion, C.R. Bard, and Karl Storz.  Prior to founding Hughes Advocacy, Krista worked as a medical device representative in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and the Florida Panhandle.

She has worked for the last five years as a “patient advocate” and we have a chance to talk about that today. Krista's “favorite mistake” is related to a time when she was advocating for a patient. We'll hear what she did (or didn't do) and how she's adjusted her approach as a result — to be a more effective advocate.

We also talk about our shared passion around what's often called “medical mistakes” — many of these mistakes are very preventable. We'll talk about systemic causes of these mistakes and how the system often falls back on a strategy of “delay, deny, and defend” which we all known gets in the way of learning and progress. We'll also explore this in a future episode with ⁠Dr. David Mayer⁠, the CEO of the ⁠Patient Safety Movement Foundation⁠, so please stay tuned for that.

You can listen to or watch the episode below. A transcript also follows lower on this page. Please subscribe, rate, and review via ⁠Apple Podcasts⁠ or ⁠Podchaser⁠! You can now ⁠sign up to get new episodes via email⁠, to make sure you don't miss an episode. This podcast is part of the ⁠Lean Communicators network⁠.