Patient Advocacy Service
The Long Life Med Advocate: Your Partner in a Broken Healthcare System
a.k.a. Hospital Patient Advocate Service
Why you Need a Hospital Patient Advocate in Las Vegas
The modern healthcare system is overwhelmed. Emergency Rooms, ICUs and Med-Surg floors are crowded, hospital staff are overworked, and doctors rotate shifts constantly. In this chaos, it is all too easy for a patient to become just a “number” or a “bed assignment.”
When you or a loved one is facing a medical emergency, it is the most vulnerable moment of your life. You may be in too much pain, confused, too anxious, or just doesn’t understand enough to make critical decisions.
Who is looking out for you?
At Long Life Med, we believe Primary Care doesn’t stop at our clinic doors. This is why we offer our Hospital Patient Advocacy service—a level of care almost unheard of in modern medicine.
We Treat You Like Family!
If you have an emergency, time doesn’t matter. Whether it’s day or night, we are here to guide you through the chaos. We can triage the situation over the phone (or on a separate line while you call 911), help with first aid, or even meet you at the ER.
⚠️ CRITICAL NOTE: Call us FIRST!
Always call us before or on your way to the hospital. Up to 90% of ER visits are unnecessary and could be handled at Long Life Med for free or a fraction of the cost.
What is “Orientation and Debrief“?
Even if we aren’t physically at the hospital with you, we provide this crucial guidance:
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Orientation (Pre-Admission): We prepare you on the way to the hospital. We tell you exactly what to expect, what to bring, and most importantly, what to tell the triage staff and doctors to ensure you get seen quickly and treated correctly.
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Debrief (Post-Rounds/Discharge): After the hospital doctors do their rounds or when you are discharged, we review everything with you. We explain the test results, clarify the plan of care, and ensure you understand your next steps.
Meet Your Advocates: Decades of ER & ICU Experience
This level of advocacy isn’t just a “perk”; it is built on decades of experience in the trenches of the medical system.
David Linton, NP: Before becoming a Nurse Practitioner, David spent decades working as a nurse in Emergency Rooms, ICUs, and Med-Surg floors. He knows exactly where medical errors happen, how the hospital hierarchy works, and how to cut through the red tape to get things done.
Kezia Badulid: Trained in patient advocacy since childhood, Kezia has spent a lifetime navigating the healthcare system for four clans of relatives and family friends. As a patient with multiple chronic conditions herself, she also has a lot of experience (& frustrations) dealing with different medical providers and health insurance companies. She knows how to ensure a patient is treated properly and be able to make informed decisions.
What Does a Patient Advocate Do? Our 3-Step Process
Think of a Patient Advocate as your personal medical bodyguard. We are not employed by the hospital; we work for YOU.
1. The Bi-Directional Translator
Communication in a hospital breaks down in two ways. We fix both.
Doctor to Patient: When a surgeon speaks in complex jargon, we translate it into plain English so you understand the risks and benefits before you consent.
Patient to Doctor: Most doctors do not have the time or the patience to conduct a thorough interview. As a result, patients often fail to mention specific symptoms, conditions, or supplements because they don’t realize they are relevant to the diagnosis. We bridge this gap. We ensure the doctor has the full, accurate picture required for a correct differential diagnosis.
2. The Quality Controller
Hospital doctors (hospitalists) often don’t have access to your full history. They don’t know you reacted poorly to a medication 10 years ago.
We catch the details. We ensure the hospital team has your full medical chart. We check medication lists for dangerous interactions. We ask the hard questions: “Have you considered X alternative?” or “Why are we ordering this duplicate test?”
3. The Coordinator
In a hospital, you might see a cardiologist in the morning and a hospitalist at dinner. Often, these doctors don’t talk to each other.
We connect the dots. We act as the central hub, ensuring the heart doctor knows what the kidney doctor said. We can also reach out to outside specialists to get you a 2nd or 3rd opinion instantly.
Real Patient Stories
Case Studies: How Advocacy Saves Lives & Prevents Medical Debt
These are real scenarios where Long Life Med stepped in to save money, sanity, and lives.
Story 1: The “Widowmaker” & The Recliner
The Situation: A 78-year-old member with diabetes, Stage 3 Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD), and severe obesity was hospitalized for suspected pneumonia. He required a CT scan to diagnose his dangerously low oxygen levels.
The Hospital’s Failure: The hospital staff tried multiple times to scan him, but failed. The patient would panic, hyperventilate, and try to get up every time they laid him flat. They were about to give up.
The Advocate’s Intervention: Our advocate arrived and realized the issue wasn’t just “anxiety.” Because of his breathing issues and obesity, this patient has not slept in a bed for years; he sleeps in a recliner even with his CPAP and oxygen. Laying him flat made him feel like he was suffocating, and that’s why he kept jumping up from the CT scanner bed.
The Fix: Our advocate instructed the staff to switch him to a full face mask with high-flow oxygen and to recline him slowly, inch by inch, to manage the panic. It worked.
The Result: The CT scan revealed a 98% occlusion of his LAD artery (the “Widowmaker”).
Saving the Life: The on-call surgeon wanted to discharge the patient and “medically manage” it (medication only), and was about to discharge him while waiting for another consult. Our advocate knew “medical management” in this case was a death sentence, and suspected that the surgeon might not just be confident enough to operate on him or doesn’t want to lower his success scores because the patient had a high probability of dying on the table. We pushed for a senior cardiac surgeon, who agreed to perform a rotational atherectomy (“roto-rooter”). The patient stayed in the ICU until received his stents and lived for two more years, and was able to attend his son’s wedding.
Story 2: The 6-Figure Anxiety Attack
The Situation: A 23-year-old woman with a history of severe anxiety and a family history of heart issues experienced chest pain. She went to the ER (before she was a member).
The Hospital’s Failure: Despite initial tests (EKG, Troponin) coming back negative, and the symptoms going away by the time they did those initial tests, the hospital kept her for 3 days. They ran advanced stress tests and repeated labs, driven by doctors covering shifts who probably hadn’t read her previous charts or just ordered them on an overabundance of caution.
The Consequence: She was uninsured and left with a six-figure bill for medically unnecessary testing.
The DPC Difference:
If she were a member: She would have called us first. Knowing her history, we would have brought her to the clinic for a free EKG and anxiety management, likely avoiding the ER entirely. Then if she really needed the ER should have been there prepared and known what to expect at each stage, and been on call during each stage.
How we helped: Since she joined after the fact, we performed a full forensic review of her hospital records. We guided her on how to contest the unnecessary tests to get her bill reduced.
Story 3: Turned Away by Urgent Care
The Situation: A patient suffered a wound with a foreign body embedded in it. He went to a local Urgent Care.
The System Failure: The Urgent Care turned him away—either because the provider wasn’t confident in their skills or because removing it would take too long (reducing their “patient volume” bonus). He was sent to the ER, waited hours, and paid a massive bill.
The DPC Difference: Had he come to Long Life Med, we would have removed the object and repaired the wound in-office, for free with his membership. No wait, no ER bill, real care, with lidocaine and antibiotics included.
Story 4: The “Protocol” vs. The Patient
The Situation: A 65-year-old member with a history of Congestive Heart Failure (CHF) arrived at the ER with a high fever and signs of a severe infection.
The Hospital’s “Blind Spot”: The ER staff immediately initiated their standard “Sepsis Protocol,” which mandates aggressive IV fluid resuscitation to keep blood pressure up. They were treating the infection by the book, but they hadn’t looked closely at his heart history.
The Advocate’s Intervention: Our advocate arrived and immediately flagged the danger: “His heart operates at an ejection fraction of only 30%. If you push fluids at that speed, you will drown his lungs.”
The Fix: We coordinated with the attending physician to adjust the protocol—using pressors (medication) to support blood pressure instead of massive fluid volume, and monitoring his fluid output strictly.
The Result: The patient survived the infection without being intubated for fluid overload (pulmonary edema), avoiding a stay in the ICU and a significantly longer, riskier recovery.
Story 5: The “Medication Cascade”
The Situation: An elderly member was admitted after a severe fall. The hospitalist noted the patient seemed confused and agitated (delirium) and planned to prescribe an antipsychotic medication to “calm him down” and prevent further falls.
The Hospital’s “Blind Spot”: The hospitalist assumed the confusion was early-onset dementia or just a result of the trauma. They didn’t know the patient’s baseline mental state was sharp as a tack.
The Advocate’s Intervention: We performed our “Updated History Audit”. We realized a urologist had recently prescribed a new bladder medication, and a neurologist had added a sleep aid. The combination was causing the dizziness and confusion.
The Fix: We advocated to stop the new medications rather than adding a third one (the antipsychotic).
The Result: Within 24 hours, the patient’s confusion cleared. He didn’t need “calming” drugs; he just needed his current regimen cleaned up. We prevented a cycle where side effects are treated with more pills, leading to more side effects.
Story 6: The “Friday Afternoon” Discharge
The Situation: A patient recovering from abdominal surgery was cleared for discharge at 4:00 PM on a Friday. The hospital was eager to free up the bed for the weekend rush.
The Hospital’s “Blind Spot”: The discharge papers included prescriptions for specialized wound care supplies and injectable blood thinners that local pharmacies often don’t stock on weekends, or require prior authorization that insurance offices are closed for.
The Advocate’s Intervention: We knew that sending him home without these supplies would result in a bounce-back readmission by Sunday.
The Fix: We refused to let the patient leave until the hospital social worker confirmed that a home health agency could deliver the supplies that evening, or we arranged for the hospital pharmacy to dispense a 72-hour bridge supply before he walked out the door.
The Result: The patient recovered comfortably at home. Without us, he would have been at home in pain, without medication, and likely back in the ER by Saturday night.
Pricing, Eligibility, and Legal Requirements
(Medical SPA)
This level of dedication requires time and resources. Here is how you can access it:
The Legal Requirement: Medical Special Power of Attorney (SPA)
If you are awake and lucid: You (or a family member present) can simply give verbal consent for the hospital staff to share records and discuss your care with us.
If you are incapacitated: To ensure we can legally protect you when you cannot speak for yourself, Long Life Med must be listed on your Medical SPA (ideally as a 3rd or 4th backup).
Why this matters: Without this legal designation or a family member present to grant permission, we are legally limited to visiting you as a “family friend” and cannot intervene in your medical care or access your charts.
Pricing by Membership Tier
Standard DPC Members:
Phone Advocacy: Included (subject to availability).
In-Person Advocacy: Available at a discounted hourly rate ($100-$150/hr).
Preferred DPC Members:
In-Person Advocacy: INCLUDED (Weekly in-person visits up to 2 hours/week).
Additional hours billed at $50-$100/hr.
Executive DPC Members:
In-Person Advocacy: INCLUDED (Daily in-person rounds up to 3 hours/day, minimum 3 days/week).
Additional hours billed at $50-$100/hr.
Don’t navigate the healthcare system alone. Join Long Life Med and have a doctor who treats you like family—inside the clinic and out.
Care Coordination: Solving Conflicting Medical Advice
(Included for ALL DPC Members)
You don’t have to be hospitalized to benefit from our advocacy. One of the most dangerous frustrations patients face is receiving conflicting advice or medications from different specialists.
The Conflict: Your Cardiologist (heart doctor) might prescribe a medication that interacts poorly with what your Nephrologist (kidney doctor) prescribed. Or, one tells you to drink less water while the other tells you to drink more.
The Confusion: You are left stuck in the middle, unsure which instructions to follow.
How We Fix It: As your DPC provider, we act as the “Quarterback” of your medical team. Before and after your visits with other specialists, we perform a thorough Orientation and Debrief:
Comprehensive Analysis: We don’t just look at one report; we collect and analyze all your reports from every specialist involved in your care. We check all your medications and supplements. We also even pay for a 3rd party laboratory that tests and analyzes thousands of supplements to see if they have what it says says on the label, if they are in a form that is absorbed by your body, and if there are anything harmful in them, so we can recommend you the best and most cost-effective combinations of supplements for your needs.
- The “Updated History” Audit: We audit your regimen based on your fully updated medical history and most recent labs. Specialists often work off of old charts. We catch medications and supplements that are unnecessary, conflicting, or harmful given your current condition—something the prescribing specialist may have missed — or the patient just added the supplements by himself/herself.
The Decision: We sit down with you to explain why the conflict exists and help you make an informed decision on which orders to follow and which to discontinue.
