Well Said Health

Hospice isn't giving up. It's the only Medicare benefit covered 100% — the nurse, the equipment, the medications, even the supplies, wherever you call home. Yet most families find it weeks, sometimes days, before it could have helped them most. The word standing in the way? Hospice.

Mary Pope, RN, BSN, came to nursing as a second career, sat at the bedside of dying patients as a hospice volunteer, and worked as a patient advocate — including at Allied Health Advocates, the company Robin co-founded — before taking her advocacy skills to the hospice side. Today she's a clinical care liaison with Gentiva Hospice in the Seattle area, and her whole job is helping families get past their fear of one word.

In this conversation, Mary explains what hospice actually covers, who qualifies and what happens at six months and a day, why hospice becomes your 911 at 2 a.m., and the exact words to say to a doctor who hasn't brought it up. You'll hear about the five o'clock martini, and the 100-year-old man who gained 20 pounds — proof that hospice is a choice. You have more control than you think.

Link to full show notes: https://www.wellsaidhealth.com/hospice-is-hope-with-mary-pope-rn/

Your mouth is treated like it isn’t part of your body — separate insurance, separate providers, separate records.

Dental hygienist and Board Certified Patient Advocate Marissa Brubaker has spent 20 years as a dental hygienist, and one working interview with a mobile dental company serving seniors led to her career as a dental advocate. She explains why gums don’t bleed (tissue tears — and the bacteria head for your bloodstream), how dry mouth can quietly cascades into weight loss and withdrawal, and how her godfather Uncle Al’s oral cancer was missed because nobody looked or asked.

Then Robin turns it into a toolkit: the exact words for the dental chair, a big treatment plan, a second opinion — and one question to ask someone you love this week.

Link to full show notes: https://www.wellsaidhealth.com/dental-care-is-vital-care/

The doctor in charge of your hospital care is probably someone you've never met. Four questions change that.

Every year, 36 million Americans — one in nine of us — are admitted to the hospital. And the physician running the show from check-in to discharge usually isn't the primary care doctor you know. It's a hospitalist: a physician who works only in the hospital, managing the care of admitted patients. Most people don't learn that until they're already in a hospital bed.

Dr. Clark Coler has seen hospital medicine from every side. The son of a small-town internist who made house calls with a black bag, trained at the Mayo Clinic where patients' humanity comes first, he became one of Seattle's first hospitalists when the movement launched in 1994 — and he's spent more than 30 years caring for patients at the most frightening moments of their lives.

In this conversation, Clark demystifies who actually runs your hospital care, why the shift structure matters to your family, the best (and worst) days to be admitted, why discharge is where mistakes happen — and the exact questions that get you and the people you love better, safer care.

Link to full show notes: https://www.wellsaidhealth.com/meet-the-hospitalist/

Nobody can navigate healthcare alone — not even the experts. Anne Llewellyn spent four decades inside the system as a nurse, risk manager, case manager, and editor. Then in November 2014, a doctor said “you have a brain tumor” — and she couldn’t speak for herself.

In the season opener, Anne shares what being a patient taught her that 40 years in healthcare couldn't, what a great advocate actually does (and what any spouse, daughter, or friend can copy tomorrow), and how to find, vet, and afford professional help. You have more power than you think. This episode is where you learn to use it.

Link to full show notes: https://www.wellsaidhealth.com/why-everyone-needs-a-health-advocate/

What if the words you use with your doctor could change everything?

Welcome to Well Said Health. I'm Robin Shapiro, and for my entire career I've helped patients tell their stories — health experiences that inspire others to navigate healthcare better, ask bolder questions, and get the care they deserve.

This podcast brings you real life stories from people who've faced some of the most common, urgent, and sometimes dangerous medical situations you might find yourself in. Each episode, gives you language to use, the questions to ask, and where to turn when you need help the most.

Because here's what I know after a lifetime of witnessing these conversations: you have more power than you think. You just need to know how to use it.

Well Said Health is coming soon — wherever you get your podcasts.