Services

By Your Side Patient Advocacy offers the following services in Cleveland and throughout Cuyahoga County:

• Prepare for appointments by determining goals, coming up with a prioritized list of questions, and making a plan.
• Attend visits including doctor’s appointments, emergency room visits, or surgery recovery to help ensure your voice is heard and to take notes for later reference.
• Help plan next steps after a doctor’s appointment or hospital visit.
• Research doctors who could meet your needs, including for second opinions.
• Find financial resources such as hospital programs and available grants.

To get started, go to the client portal and:

• Make an account and verify your email
• Fill out the intake form – as soon as you verify your email, a request for you to fill out this form will appear
• When that’s submitted, click ‘schedule appointment’ and then the blue button that says ‘book appointment.’ This will allow you to schedule an initial video call. At this first call we will discuss your needs and how By Your Side can help – we will make a plan together. After this call you will get a contract for our work together.

Please note that clients are taken on a first come, first served basis. To ensure that we can give our clients the time they need, we only accept a limited number of clients at a time. Also, please note that we require that you do both an intake call (if you’re a new client) and an appointment preparation call before we attend an appointment. So we recommend reaching out at least a week before your appointment, preferably two. Exceptions may be made on a case-by-case basis, especially for emergency situations.

Pricing

By Your Side Patient Advocacy is founded on the beliefs that everyone deserves an advocate at their side while navigating the medical system, and that oftentimes those who need our services the most are the least able to pay high rates. That’s why we offer the following pay-what-you-can system for our services:

Our recommended rate is $200 an hour. However, we work with clients individually to set prices to ensure our services are affordable. This system is not based on income levels or other personal information. You as the client set the rate. We will never turn a client away based on how much they can pay, but we do ask that you genuinely think through the value our services provide and what fits in your budget. If you are able to pay higher than the recommended rate to allow us to keep services accessible to all, it is greatly appreciated.

We do require that you reimburse By Your Side for any expenses necessary to complete agreed upon services (e.g. mileage and parking). Whenever possible, we will notify you of anticipated expenses in advance.