Osborne, Liz (W.L. Hesse, Bridget Kraft)

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Osborne, Liz (W.L. Hesse, Bridget Kraft)

PERSONAL:

Education: Seattle University, B.A.; University of Washington, M.S.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Sage Consulting, 77 Blanca Dr., Novato, CA 94947. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer. Group Health Cooperative of Puget Sound, Seattle, WA, consumer relations department manager for fifteen years; Sage Consulting, Novato, CA, staff member.

MEMBER:

Society for Healthcare Consumer Advocacy (fellow and board member), Authors Guild, Mystery Writers of America, Pacific Northwest Writers Association.

WRITINGS:

Resolving Patient Complaints: A Step-by-Step Guide to Effective Service Recovery, Aspen Publishers (Gaithersburg, MD), 1995.

Managed Care and Capitation Contracting for Home Health Agencies, Aspen Publishers (Gaithersburg, MD), 1996.

NOVELS

(As W.L. Hesse) Timegate, Writer's Showcase Press, 2002.

(As Bridget Kraft) Fields of Gold, Five Star (Detroit, MI), 2005.

Masquerade: A Robyn Kelly Mystery, Five Star (Detroit, MI), 2007.

SIDELIGHTS:

Liz Osborne served as the manager of the Consumer Relations Department for Group Health Cooperative of Puget Sound for fifteen years, a background she mined for her books on health care and medical and wellness institutions, Resolving Patient Complaints: A Step-by-Step Guide to Effective Service Recovery, considered the most comprehensive volume of its kind, and Managed Care and Capitation Contracting for Home Health Agencies. Resolving Patient Complaints stresses the importance of tracking and addressing patient complaints from the beginning, as well as looking at the patient's point of view. James R. Brown, in a review for Healthcare Financial Management, remarked of Osborne's effort: "A section on how to deal with challenging and abusive patients is especially helpful. The book provides insight on how to identify these patients and includes examples of how to work with them effectively."

In addition to writing about health care and patient advocacy, Osborne has written several works of fiction. The science fiction novel Timegate was published under the name W.L. Hesse, and a second effort, Fields of Gold, was released in 2005 under the name Bridget Kraft. Masquerade: A Robyn Kelly Mystery, the first novel in a mystery series featuring widow and single mother Robyn Kelly, was published in 2007. Set near Seattle, the mystery revolves around a car accident that lands numerous injured people in the nearby emergency room where Robyn works as a patient relations manager. One of the patients is obviously well-off, and turns out to be Jake Hamilton, the local congressman. Hamilton complains while in the emergency room that he is not receiving sufficiently attentive care, even though other patients are more severely injured. He later files a formal complaint against Robyn, accusing her of being rude and of failing to take his injuries seriously. When he turns up dead, Robyn finds herself in far more serious trouble. In a review for the I Love a Mystery Newsletter online, contributor Harriet Klausner wrote: "Readers will appreciate Thanksgiving in Seattle as Robyn rips away the masquerades of everyone she works with in an attempt to uncover the real culprit." Sue O'Brien, writing in Booklist, remarked of Osborne that she "effectively intersperses interesting details about hospital routines and patientrelations work into the story." A Kirkus Reviews contributor called the book "a meat-and-potatoes debut in which Osborne's convincing hospital background and respect for evidence substitute for originality and inspiration."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, February 1, 2007, Sue O'Brien, review of Masquerade: A Robyn Kelly Mystery, p. 35.

Healthcare Financial Management, May 1, 1996, James R. Brown, review of Resolving Patient Complaints: A Step-by-Step Guide to Effective Service Recovery, p. 64.

Kirkus Reviews, February 1, 2007, review of Masquerade, p. 104.