March 2008 Newsletter
Consultants in Dysphagia Evaluation and Management
817-514-MBS1 or 1-888-514-MBS1
March 2008
Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
And Happy Easter!
Clinical Café Newsletter
By: Ronda Polansky M.S. CCC-SLP
Monthly Motivator:
Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you CAN do!
Upcoming Conferences
First, I would like to thank all of you who attended the E-Stim Review conference on the 1st! We enjoyed seeing all of you again!
MARK YOUR CALENDAR for a 7.5 CEU` E-Stim Conference! April 26, 2008– Houston, Texas – Deciphering Dysphagia with E-Stim updated for 2008.
Professional Imaging LLC is a Mobile MBSS company in East Texas, Houston, Austin, and San Antonio, not a part of DiagnosTEX, LLC. They have invited us as guest speakers; please call their Corp office 1-866-675-MBSS to register or any questions
UPCOMING DiagnosTEX HOLIDAY – DiagnosTEX will recognize Good Friday March 21st as a holiday. Please keep this in mind when scheduling your MBSS. HAPPY EASTER!
EDUCATION – Here at DiagnosTEX we hold education and continued education at the highest level of priority. DiagnosTEX provides many conferences during the year, locally at a low rate for all SLP’s, we provide monthly handouts to all the facilities we service, we have completed multiple facility education to nursing staff as well as dietary and Home Health agencies. Annually we work with 3 local universities and graduate classes and allow DiagnosTEX to be a source for on-site observation and also provide in class education on MBSS. We all have an “ethical responsibility not only to learn but also contribute to the total score of scientific knowledge when possible, etc. (E 9.095 AMA Policy). Under the ASHA Code of Ethics and Scope of Practice we are held to the responsibility that “individuals may only practice in areas in which they are competent based on their education, training and expertise (Principle of Ethics II Rule B). However, SLP’s may expand their current level of expertise. Certain situations may necessitate that SLP’s pursue additional training to further expand their personal scope of practice.” Medicare Manual revisions made to Chapter 15 of the Medicare Policy Manual (effective June 6, 2005) state that “Practioners that provide or perform dysphagia services are expected to have specific competencies in upper aerodigestive tract structure and function as well as oral, pharyngeal, laryngeal, and respiratory function”. DiagnosTEX is open to meeting your dysphagia education needs in your facilities if you need us, please call us to schedule a time.
Important information regarding the scheduling of your MBSS
We do our very best to provide you with efficient, timely, and the highest quality of studies! Please be aware that if there are specific time requests or a specific day of the week requested for your MBSS, we can not ensure that day that particular week or scheduling in 24-48 hours due to the complex scheduling of our 3 vans with so many facilities in so many locations across the DFW map. Please notify your patient/families and facility staff that time/day restrictions and limitations may delay scheduling the patient’s study several days. We appreciate your understanding of this and we will continue to strive for our high standard…… of 24-48 hours! If your facility cancels an MBSS schedule for a particular day , this pending MBSS will go back on the list as if the request just came in, therefore it will be another 24-48 hours, approximately, before we will be able to reschedule. Also please be aware that 24 -48 hours is a standard we STRIVE very hard to maintain, but this is not a guarantee, only a very passionate effort by all of the DiagnosTEX staff.
LATE in our mobile MBSS business stands for – L = patients Laying in Bed, A – Accidents and Add-ons, T=Traffic, E = Emergencies and Emotional Families/Patients. But each patient is as important to us as the next! We strive very hard to stay on a scheduled time, but difficult patients, add-ons, traffic, accidents, involved families, patients not being up when we get to the facility etc can cause delays in our schedule. We are sorry for any delays that may occur and affect you and your patients scheduled MBSS but this unfortunately is the nature of a mobile business. We will stay in contact with you on our estimated arrival time. Please explain to family members, patients, and other facility staff that we travel all over the Dallas/Fort Worth and surrounding areas and there are many situations likely to occur that may affect our arrival time. But waiting at the facility will be much more comfortable than waiting in a hospital radiology waiting room.
ADVANCE for Speech Language Pathologists & Audiologists
E-Stim article “NMES treatment Option for Dysphagia” came out in Feb 11, 2008. Volume 18.
No. 6 – check it out on line at www.advanceweb.com.
Flu season is still here!!!!! – DiagnosTEX keeps stock of Airborne in the office, on our vans!! J We service many elderly and medically fragile individuals in a day and we are very concerned and conscientious that we not pass along anything to them. We would like to ask all of the facility SLP’s, staff or even families that are ill, coughing, and may have a cold or other illness, to PLEASE take precaution in coming on the van, as our small environment is easily contaminated. We know you like to be present for the study, but we must consider the health of the rest of the patients as well as our own staff. Thank you so much for your consideration of this.
Dysphagia Tidbit – Thickened Liquids
Research at Wake Forest University tested viscosity of foods that ranged in thickness from thin to nectar (thicker) to honey (thickest), using the National Dysphagia DIET (NDD) terminology. They found that of four different prepared dysphagia diet foods used at the Medical Center (Resource, Hormel, Carnation and Boost) the viscosity listed for Resource was the most consistent with NDD guidelines.