November 2020 Newsletter
Happy Thanksgiving!
There is no better time to express our appreciation for your business and trust in us!
The friendship of those we serve is the foundation of our success serving the DFW area! This is the season to reflect on your blessings and even more so in 2020. I know at DiagnosTEX, we are incredibly thankful for each and every one of you who chose to use us as your preferred mobile healthcare provider and have shared both your friendship and endless support over the years. We truly wish you and your families a very Happy Thanksgiving with many, many blessings as we enter this 2020 holiday season that looks much different than years past!
IT IS ELECTION TIME! YOUR VOTE COUNTS!
Swallow and be thankful for your teeth!
Family- fun! Food is the glue holding these 2 things together during holidays.
We celebrate so many events in our lives around food, we take dates to dinner, we celebrate birthdays with cake and ice cream, we toast to wedding and graduation celebrations and we meet for coffee/tea or have lunch with friends. Everything we do in relationship often revolves around food. You don’t know how much until you cannot eat or drink anymore. Its important we help others be able to enjoy this simple pleasure in life. Being an advocate for proper dysphagia evaluations and proper dysphagia treatment is part of responsibility and a healthcare professional.
DTEX November Schedule
DiagnosTEX will be closed on Thursday November 12 and 13th as we are moving to a new office location at 8913 Mid Cities Blvd, #100 in North Richland Hills. We are all very excited to upgrade our home away from home after 18 years in business. Our phone number will be the same, but please be patient with us during the move as we get everything transitioned. We will be running extra vans on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of that week to meet everyone’s needs.
We will also be closed on Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, November 26th and Friday the 27th , to count our blessings this year and spend time with our families.
We want to meet all of your MBSS needs because we know PO feeding becomes important on many levels to many of your patients around the holidays, especially when Thanksgiving is traditionally planned and prepared with a great deal of attention to food. We will be running extra vans on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of that week to meet the MBSS needs. We also want to be fair and accommodating to each DiagnosTEX employee and their families. We are so thankful for them as well! Please keep our holiday schedules in mind when scheduling your MBSS at the end of November (and December)! ******Please take note and keep in mind that during this busy time of year, specific requests for specific times and/or days become exponentially difficult to accommodate. We may be unable to quickly schedule your patient with certain time and day requests. Please notify your staff, patients, and families of this. ****** DiagnosTEX bases our mobile clinic schedules by geographical areas for time, efficiency and operational cost. If your patient’s schedule is limited to certain days and times, we recommend an outpatient facility (such as a hospital). Our mobile service is an option for you that offers convenience in the equipment coming to you, but it is not for the flexibility of specific days and time schedules. Please keep in mind that DiagnosTEX is not a portable X -ray service and we do not provide stat services. DiagnosTEX is an independent physician clinic/office and operates under normal physician office hours Monday through Thursday with an occasional Friday, if a holiday or unusual circumstance with mechanical issues with the van interferes and/or effects the other scheduled days. Fridays are typically a day we use to service all of our mobile vehicles and this is company policy. As with any physician office, every patient’s paperwork must be processed and insurance must be verified before we will schedule an appt. Also, as a physician clinic/office we schedule our appointments as it fits into our schedules and it may take anywhere from 1-7 days to get scheduled with us.
DiagnosTEX is providing mobile COVID testing
We are partnering with Concierge Urgent Care to provide rapid CVOID testing – getting your COVID results within hours instead of days. We will come to you! We can test an entire staff, or groups of patients. We are able to bill Medicare, Medicaid, private insurance or take private pay. We are so excited to be able to help and assist the facilities we service during this period of unrest and confusion. We can also test for the flu. Coming soon we will have dual testing for both COVID and Flu for the upcoming flu season. Please call us with any questions or to schedule a testing day.
AMPCARE - Data from the 10th ESSD Congress: Case study series of COVID-19 survivors with severe pharyngeal dysphagia, treatments using Ampcare ESP “improved sufficiently” post therapy.
Congratulations Amanda Forrester and Sheffield Hospital for this promising research on Post COVID-19 dysphagia treatment! Thank you to Nicola Martindale and Sue Pownall for their continuing dysphagia research, which benefits all of us!
Key findings from 22 patients included:
-19 were able to safely increase the amount / variety of food they were eating.
-10 of 11 patients who were NPO at the start of therapy were able to introduce some oral intake. -9 of 20 patients who were tube dependent were able to meet their needs orally after therapy.
If you want to be certified in this treatment technique that is helping so many patients, go to www.Ampcarellc.com to get registered for an upcoming course.
November is Alzheimer’s awareness month
Dysphagia and aspiration pneumonia are the 2 most serious medical conditions seen in late-stage Alzheimer's disease patients. Due to the degenerative aspect of Alzheimer's and the varying speed of degeneration, it is important to evaluate and re-evaluate these patients. Malnutrition and dehydration are the major issues in this population; therefore, it is important to understand their current level of functioning concerning their feeding and swallowing as they progress through the stages. My mother is suffering the end stages of Alzheimer’s and over COVID lockdown has dropped to 68lbs. Never overlook the importance of this population’s need for dysphagia evaluations and proper diets.
Dysphagia Support Group
‘The NFOSD is offering a virtual swallowing support group for adults impacted by dysphagia. Beginning in November, they will be offering one for parents/caregivers of children with feeding and swallowing disorders. The virtual support groups are not replacements for standard medical or psychological advice and care, but can be an additional valuable resource to help you make connections with others facing similar challenges. The groups are moderated by a licensed family/marriage counselor and a swallowing specialist.
You can Contact NFOSD at:
Email: info@nfosd.com
Website: www.nfosd.org
BE CREATIVE! - Winter drinks with thickener
