{"id":3057,"date":"2007-10-19T13:25:52","date_gmt":"2007-10-19T13:25:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zmetro.com\/?p=3057"},"modified":"2007-10-19T13:25:52","modified_gmt":"2007-10-19T13:25:52","slug":"a_profession_is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=3057","title":{"rendered":"A profession is born to help people navigate the health care maze"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sfgate.com\/cgi-bin\/article.cgi?file=\/c\/a\/2007\/10\/18\/MNJQSQA2O.DTL\">Victoria Colliver<\/a>: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>Margalit Mathan and Peter August found themselves caught in a maze of medical appointments and conflicting professional opinions when their 7-year-old daughter developed serious eye problems related to her juvenile rheumatoid arthritis.<br \/>\nThe Berkeley family decided to consult yet another professional. They turned to a health care advocate, an adviser who specializes in helping patients and their families cut through the health care bureaucracy to find the help they need.<br \/>\n&#8220;It&#8217;s been this huge roller coaster with the medical system and negotiating her different needs and the different information we&#8217;re getting from different doctors,&#8221; said Mathan, a high school psychologist. Her daughter, Siona, was diagnosed two years ago with arthritis, a condition that can cause eye inflammation and, in Siona&#8217;s case, led to glaucoma.<br \/>\nPrivate health care advocacy is a new and growing field emerging at a time when an increasing number of Americans find themselves dealing with a chronic disease, aging family members or the bureaucracy of health insurance.<br \/>\nA professional advocate might have some background in health care, such as nursing or medical social work. But the business of health advocacy is unregulated, and people who call themselves a health advocate might have no training other than helping a family member through a difficult illness.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Victoria Colliver: Margalit Mathan and Peter August found themselves caught in a maze of medical appointments and conflicting professional opinions when their 7-year-old daughter developed serious eye problems related to her juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. The Berkeley family decided to consult yet another professional. They turned to a health care advocate, an adviser who specializes in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,32,18],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3057"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3057\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}