May 2009 Newsletter
Consultants in Dysphagia Evaluation and Management
817-514-MBS1 or 1-888-514-MBS1
May 2009
MAY IS BETTER SPEECH AND HEARING MONTH
Happy Mother’s Day!
Happy Memorial Day!
Remember our men and women that have sacrificed all to fight and maintain our freedom!
Clinical Café Newsletter
By: Ronda Polansky M.S. CCC-SLP
Monthly Motivator: Tranquility
Be still in the midst of activity to discover the strength found in inward reservoirs previously unknown.
MAY is Better Speech and Hearing Month – This annual event provides opportunities to raise awareness about communication disorders and to promote treatment that can improve the quality of life for those who experience problems with speaking, understanding, or hearing. ASHA has many resources to help you celebrate BHSM everyday. www.asha.org
DiagnosTEX Holiday –DiagnosTEX will observe Memorial Day on Monday, May 25th. Please keep this in mind when scheduling your MBSS around that time. Thank you. We have veterans working for DiagnosTEX and we honor them as well as those who have and are currently sacrificing for our freedom!
May Conferences
Saturday May 2, 2009, Deciphering Dysphagia with E-Stim Neuromuscular Re-education of the Submandibular Muscles to Increase Laryngeal Elevation Using Class II NMES Device
7.5 TSHA CEU”S – Houston, TX Texas 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 a guest speaker, please call their Corp office 1-866-675-MBSS to register or for any questions about the conference. Limited seating.
Saturday May 30, 2009 –DSI – Dysphagia Scene Investigator. 6.0 TSHA CEU’s in Austin, Texas. 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 me as a guest speaker, please call their Corp office 1-866-675-MBSS to register or for any questions about the conference. Limited seating.
Upcoming E-Stim conference in DFW – July 18th, be looking for more details next month
New Educational Handout – Guilty by Association – CERVICAL SPINE and how it relates to dysphagia. Ask for your next time we see you!
ETHICS CEU requirement If many of you did not know, Texas now requires 2 hours of Ethics CEU’s, and the deadline will be December 2009. Like most states that regulate and license audiologists and/or speech-language pathologists, Texas has a continuing education requirement for renewal of licensure. In Texas, that requirement is 20 clock hours for a 2-year term or 30 clock hours for those licensed in both professions. Effective for renewals beginning in May 2009, licensees in Texas must now satisfy a new mandatory ethics continuing education component. Specifically, licensed audiologists and speech-language pathologists in Texas must now secure at least 2 of their 20 clock hours of continuing education in ethics for each license renewal period. For those licensed in both professions the ethics requirement is 3 clock hours. It has come to our attention that at the meeting of the Texas licensure board on February 27, 2009, the board voted to grant an extended grace period for its licensees to meet the new ethics continuing education requirement. Audiologists and speech-language pathologists renewing their licenses between May 2009 and December 2009 will now have until December 31, 2009, to meet the ethics requirement. However, licensees will not be able to count clock hours in ethics earned during the grace period toward their renewal in 2011. Although some professional regulatory entities in medicine and law have a long history of requiring ethics continuing education for renewal purposes, Texas is, as far as we know, the only state that has mandated an ethics continuing education component for audiologists and speech-language pathologists. At this time, Texas has not published guidance that reflects the scope and nature of courses that will satisfy the state’s ethics requirement. The number of topics that could be construed to fall under the topic of “ethics” is broad. DiagnosTEX will be providing an Ethics course by end of summer, first of Fall!
Special Requests for an MBSS Although many of the staff are very honored to be requested on a history form for an MBSS. Please know that since all of the DiagnosTEX SLP’s and other staff do not always work 5 days a week, this type of request will very hard to accommodate. We will schedule and group by location of facility and geographical area, not by specific time, or staff. This will allow your patient to be seen in a timelier manner. Also please remember mobile allows for the convenience of a medical procedure coming to you, but requires flexibility. Mobile is often not appropriate for those needing a specific time in the day. For example, if your patient or family needs a 2pm appt., please encourage them to schedule that at a hospital where scheduling occurs at a fixed location with the patient arriving at the time that best accommodates them.
Confirmation Call When we call the facility to contact the SLP to schedule an MBSS, or the techs call prior to the arrival, we do our best to locate you and we are often transferred to many extensions, placed on hold for many minutes, or hung up on! J We try to leave messages with someone at the facility in Rehab or at last resort the nurses station, but if we do not have a personal cell phone for the facility SLP, we can not be held responsible for whether your facility gets the message to you or not. We utilize all avenues possible to leave you a message but please understand we will call the number given to us on the history form only. Please provide us with the most effective way of contacting you to schedule your MBSS or to let you know we are on our way!
Dysphagia Tidbit – THICK-IT delivered Thick-it now has new pureed foods, with many options such as beef stew, lasagna, carmel apple pie, sweet corn, chicken a la King, etc. They come in 15 oz cans and can be delivered to the home. Pam and I both tasted them at TSHA. I preferred the Lasagna and the carmel apple pie! This is a great option for families going home on a puree diet. For more information go to www.thickitdelivered.com or call 800-7778-4704 24 hours a day.