April 2022 Newsletter

"April hath put a spirit of youth in everything."

Get prepared! It’s getting close…..MAY is Better Speech and Hearing Month

Be prepared next month, we need to educate now more than ever! The May event provides opportunities to raise awareness. ASHA has many resources to help you celebrate BHSM every day. Some good educational material to share can also be found in the DiagnosTEX Bookstore and the Barium Barista Clinical Cafe at www.dysphagiadiagnostex.com.

Check it out!

ABOVE and BEYOND by Ronda Polansky M.S. CCC-SLP
Patient, Caregiver, and Healthcare Professional Educational Reference Sheets and Handouts for Effective Dysphagia Rehabilitation. Over 30 handouts on specific disorders in dysphagia in ONE location to use in your practice, plus a resource section for SLPs on cranial nerve testing, pharyngeal exercises, and treatment techniques. A need-to-have booklet in your therapy bag!! Cost: $40.00. (plus S&H). Discounted to $30.00 for MBSH Month. Call us, and we will get one out to you!

What You Can Not See at Bedside (DVD or jump drive)
Copies of MBSS studies for the education of staff and families on various disorders and clear episodes of penetrations and aspirations. Cost - $40.00 (plus S & H). Discounted to $30.00 for MBSH Month. A great educational tool for anyone! This is the same video we presented at TSHA.

An SLP Should NEVER Lose Their Voice: Advocate for Proper Dysphagia Evaluations
Material to assist in educating Physicians, Administrators, Nurses, and other Medical Professionals on Dysphagia and Modified Barium Swallow Studies.

A sad trend since 2020

Lack of advocacy for proper and timely instrumental evaluations and lack of any sense of urgency or above and beyond for patent care has become more prevalent. MBSS studies get canceled or postponed because no one will take the time to get the patient out of bed. Unheard of in years past. What if your family member needed a medical test or procedure that was not completed because no one was willing to get them out of bed? Would that be proper medical care for your loved one? Not in my world. Protecting patient access to timely inpatient rehabilitation hospital care is American Medical Rehabilitation Providers Assoc. principal policy focus in 2022. I think we can all admit that 2021 was as unpredictable as 2020. While last year certainly wasn’t as crippling to society, rehab therapy experienced many ups and downs and twists and turns like so many other industries. As we start a new year, we can hopefully expect a little more consistency. I believe we need to turn a corner again in advocating for the profession and our patients, and the proof is in the progress we have made over the past 10 years and will continue to make. Let’s keep moving and improving and put our patients first. I believe in the passion to service those in need and go above and beyond all we need do to for timely and proper evaluation and treatment for dysphagia patients of all ages.

Are you Ampcare Certified?

Upcoming CEU courses

Provide the best dysphagia treatment for the most success in airway close and hyolaryngeal elevation. Register now at www.ampcarellc.com

• Deciphering Dysphagia with Ampcare’s ESP™ (Effective Swallowing Protocol) On-Demand + Zoom Webinar Tuesday & Wednesday, April 12-13, 2022 5-7 pm CST (6-8 pm EST) *8 Hours Advanced ASHA CE
  
  
• Deciphering Dysphagia with Ampcare’s ESP™ (Effective Swallowing Protocol) On-Demand + Live, In-Person on April 30 4 hours of online coursework before live date Total of 8 hours Advanced ASHA CEUs.

DiagnosTEX is in the planning stages of the 1 st local CE course since 2019! WOOHOO!

Course: TOTAL Dysphagia
Learn how to positively effect your dysphagia treatment and program hearing from reps of top dysphagia products, dysphagia services, and dysphagia experts in the area of speech pathology. Multiple speakers, multiple topics! It will be so much fun; you will not want to miss out on not only the great information but the most cost saving in person CE in May 2022!

New Vaccine Mandate in effect May 2022

Due to the new government mandate on all healthcare workers, going into effect this month, very strict policies are being implemented by all medical facilities. DiagnosTEX is a medical doctors office, although mobile, we are identified and classified as a separate entity by Medicare, such as a free-standing hospital or local stand-alone physician office. We are not considered an employee, independent contractor, or in-house vendor at any facility. Our staff does not evaluate or treat patients in any facility, only in a DiagnosTEX owned medical clinic. DiagnosTEX is a medical clinic/physician’s office which has all policies and procedures in place for ensuring staff are fully vaccinated, providing exemptions, and tracking staff vaccinations and routine screenings. Such company information is kept in our employee’s personal file at the main office in North Richland Hills, Texas. As a private independent medical practice, we are subject to abide by the current mandate, which we ensure we have implemented to its fullest extent, systems in place to train and retrain workers on how to follow the established protocols, including but not limited to: vaccine mandates, Personal Protective Equipment - proper PPE ( gloves, gowns, eye protection, and medical/surgical/N95 masks) when exposed to any patient with or without suspected or confirmed COVID-19 or other sources of SARS-CoV-2. DiagnosTEX does not see patients with a confirmed active COVID -19 virus. The new vaccine mandate and the implementation of new policies and procedures for each location (including DTEX), no one from DiagnosTEX staff will enter a facility at any time for any reason while the government vaccine mandate is in place. If we were to enter the facility, it would make our current vaccination policy, as a separate entity, null and void as an outpatient clinic and misappropriately categorize us into a facility’s vaccinate mandate policy according to some of the local facility’s policies in DFW. To all referring staff: DiagnosTEX will always continue to notify you on our way to the facility with an ETA and also notify you when we arrive. We will wait no longer than 15 minutes after providing those 2 previous notifications. If the patient is not brought out to us within 15 minutes after we arrive, there will be a cancellation fee applied to the stop. Healthcare staff accompanying the patient are allowed to attend the evaluation. No family member is allowed. If you do not attend the evaluation and cannot meet us outside or at the mobile clinic promptly after the reports are completed, to provide you a printed report, it will be emailed or faxed to you within 24 hours. We are sorry for any inconvenience and appreciate your understanding of us as a unique service/mobile physician’s office working within the boundaries of the newly established government mandate of 2022.