Frequently Asked Questions

We are committed to understanding our clients’ needs on a holistic basis.  Everyone is unique and we ensure our clients’ personal goals and needs are prioritized throughout their health care experiences.  We help clients acquire information and access resources that enable them to make health care decisions that are right for them.

For every client, we wear several hats: we are their advocates, their health care managers, and always, their partners for care every step of the way. 

We are not medical providers.  In fact, even medically trained doctors and nurses in our field cannot deliver direct care.

We play a consultative role, helping clients find the best care suited for them. In our field, it’s considered a conflict of interest to provide direct care or steer clients in decisions about their care.

However, we often accompany clients to doctor visits and at hospital discharge to take notes, ask questions on behalf of our clients and make sure that they always leave with a good understanding of the information shared by their medical providers with a clear sense of the next steps in care.

By partnering with our clients during doctor visits, hospital discharge, and other points of care, clients feel fully informed and, thus, fully comfortable with their care options and decisions.

We’ve had lots of good feedback from doctors that our help to their patients gives them peace of mind, too. They are fully aware that health care can be complicated for patients and families: knowing we are on the same team in a consultative role  – often coordinating care among several providers – helps ensure that their patients will have better outcomes. 

lnsurance providers may put limits around services, medications and treatments patients can receive, which may not be in the patient’s best interest. In order to act solely on behalf of our clients’ health care needs and priorities, we do not take insurance. If necessary, we must to be able to “go to the mat” for our clients – which we do. 

Just one example: Ellie, aged 2, was offered life-saving surgery at a highly respected children’s hospital but the family’s insurance company denied coverage, deeming the surgery “too risky.”  We tracked down a senior executive from their insurance provider on a chair lift in Colorado and asked him to reverse the decision – which he did!  Ellie is now 10 years old and thriving.  Periodically, we send updates on her full life to the insurance executive so he can feel good about his life-saving role.  

When necessary, we are also well positioned to negotiate with insurance companies for lower costs when clients come to us with medical bills that have excessive charges and mistakes. Little known fact, 70% of medical bills for hospital stays have errors and we catch them!   

Another example: We saved one young couple, whose newborn needed 2 months of ICU care, over $100,000 in out-of-pocket costs through a combination of state grant programs and cost reductions due to incorrect insurance codes and other billing errors. 

We accept checks,  PayPal and all major credit cards, except American Express.

We’d love to hear from you! Call 847.208.6074 during business hours or send a note on our contact form.  The initial 15-minute consultation is free of charge and if the help you need is outside the scope of our practice, we can refer you to other resources.

Our normal business hours are 8:30am – 5pm. We can arrange for appointments at other times, too. Please note that we are not medical providers so if you are experiencing a medical problem, please call your doctor or 911.

Our office is in Lake Forest, IL and our service area extends to the entire metro Chicago area. Increasingly, we work with clients who are comfortable with telehealth meetings from their computers or tablets, so our client base is growing nationally.