Patient Advocate in Sahuarita

Sahuarita, Pima County, Arizona

Nurse advocacy for Sahuarita patients and families

Sahuarita sits between Tucson and Green Valley, and its households span both patterns — younger families who moved south for space, and older residents who have settled into the corridor. What they share is a practical problem: the specialist care is mostly north, in Tucson, and the driving adds up.

That distance changes how care goes wrong. Appointments get spaced further apart because each one costs half a day. Follow-up tests get deferred. A question that would have prompted a quick call in Tucson gets left until the next visit, three months later. And when several specialists are involved, the gaps between them widen, because nobody is making the drive twice to reconcile two opinions.

Amy DuBois, RN, BCPA, works that gap directly. She obtains previous medical records and formulates a single medical summary for all the physicians on the case, reviews medications for potential interactions, coordinates follow-up tests and appointments so trips are not wasted, and facilitates communication between the physicians involved so each is working from current information.

She also accompanies clients to appointments in Tucson. For a family in Sahuarita, that can mean the difference between a specialist visit that produces a clear plan and one that produces a page of notes nobody fully understood on the drive home.

Amy meets Sahuarita clients at home and at local providers, and accompanies them to the Tucson hospitals and specialists where much of their care happens.