Editorial Standards

What gets published

We publish first-person accounts of insurance denials, delays, and interference in medical care submitted by patients, caregivers, and family members. To be considered for publication, a submission must:

• Describe a real, personal experience with an insurance denial, prior authorization delay, claim dispute, or related coverage barrier.
• Be submitted by the person who experienced it, or by a caregiver or family member acting on behalf of someone who cannot submit for themselves.
• Be written in the first person or clearly attributed to the person whose experience is being described.
• Include enough detail — condition, type of denial or delay, state, year of occurrence, and outcome — to be meaningful to readers facing similar situations.
• Be accompanied by agreement to our Submission Agreement, which grants us a perpetual, irrevocable license to publish and edit the story.

We do not require documentation, medical records, or proof of the events described. Publication is not a verification of every factual claim — it is an amplification of a patient's lived experience. We note this clearly in our site-wide disclaimer.

What gets rejected

We decline to publish submissions that:

• Name individual clinicians, nurses, or non-executive staff by full name in a way that could expose them to personal harm or harassment. We focus on systemic failures, not individual blame at the care-team level.
• Contain unverifiable third-party accusations — for example, allegations of criminal conduct by a named individual without any supporting context.
• Include protected health information about someone other than the submitter — such as a family member's diagnosis shared without their consent.
• Are clearly fictional, satirical, or submitted in bad faith.
• Promote a specific product, service, attorney, or provider in a way that reads as advertising rather than personal experience.
• Contain hate speech, slurs, or content targeting a person's identity.
• Are submitted by someone who has not agreed to our Submission Agreement.

We do not notify submitters of rejections by default, but you may contact us at [email protected] if you have not seen your story published within 30 days and would like a status update.

How we edit stories

We edit every published story before it goes live. Our editing is light-touch and focused on three goals: clarity, privacy, and readability. We do not rewrite stories to change their meaning, soften their impact, or make them more favorable to any insurer or institution.

Specifically, our editing may include:

• Grammar and spelling corrections — fixing typos, punctuation, and sentence structure without altering the submitter's voice.
• Length trimming — condensing very long submissions to focus on the core experience, while preserving the key facts and emotional arc.
• Privacy redactions — removing or replacing full names of non-public individuals, specific account numbers, addresses, and other details that could identify the submitter or a third party beyond what they intended to share.
• Structural formatting — breaking up very long paragraphs for readability on screen.

We do not add facts, quotes, or details that were not in the original submission. We do not editorialize within the story text itself. Any editorial context we add appears separately from the story — for example, in a category label or introductory note — and is clearly distinguished from the submitter's own words.

Submitters are not shown a draft before publication. If you believe your published story was materially altered in a way that changes its meaning, please contact us using the process described in the Complaints and correction requests section below.

How we protect privacy

Patient privacy is central to everything we do. We take the following steps to protect the identity of every person whose story appears on this site:

• First name and last initial only. We publish stories under a first name and last initial (e.g., "Maria T.") — never a full name — unless the submitter explicitly requests otherwise in writing.
• Anonymous option. Submitters may request full anonymity. Anonymous stories are published without any name attribution.
• No contact information published. We never publish a submitter's email address, phone number, home address, or any other direct contact detail.
• Redaction of incidental identifiers. During editing, we remove or generalize details that could inadvertently identify someone — such as a very specific job title at a small employer, a rare condition combined with a small geographic area, or a specific date that narrows identity.
• No sale or sharing of submitter data. We do not sell, license, or share submitter contact information with third parties. See our Privacy Policy and Data Ethics & Research Use Policy for full details.

If you submitted a story and are concerned that it contains information you did not intend to share, please contact us immediately at [email protected]. We will review the story and make any necessary redactions promptly.

Complaints and correction requests

We take complaints seriously. If you believe a published story contains a factual error, was published without proper consent, violates someone's privacy, or otherwise should be corrected or removed, here is how to reach us:

• Email us at [email protected] with the subject line "Correction Request" or "Removal Request."
• Include the URL of the story in question and a clear description of the issue.
• If you are the original submitter requesting a change to your own story, please include the name and email address you used when submitting so we can verify your identity.

We aim to acknowledge all correction and removal requests within 5 business days and to resolve them within 14 business days of receipt. Complex requests — for example, those involving a dispute between a submitter and a third party named in a story — may take longer, and we will communicate with you about the timeline.

Possible outcomes include: a factual correction appended to the story, a targeted redaction, or full removal of the story from the public archive. We do not alter the substance of a story in response to pressure from an insurer, employer, or other institution — only in response to a legitimate request from the submitter or a credible privacy or accuracy concern.

Our commitment to you

Patients Over Policies was founded by a two-time cancer survivor and Oncology Nurse Navigator who has seen firsthand what insurance denials do to patients and families. This site exists because those stories deserve to be heard — accurately, respectfully, and without compromise.

We are not a news organization, and we do not claim to independently verify every detail in every story. What we do claim is this: we publish every story in good faith, we protect the people who trust us with their experiences, and we hold ourselves to the standards described on this page.

If you have a question about our editorial process that is not answered here, please reach out at [email protected].

Last updated: July 23, 2026