November 2021 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 even when the world seems at its worst. 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 in the good times and bad. We truly wish you and your families a very Happy Thanksgiving with many, many blessings as we enter this 2021 holiday season that continues to look different than years past!
IT IS ELECTION TIME!
YOUR VOTE COUNTS!
Swallow and be thankful for your teeth and good hyolaryngeal elevation!
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. It’s 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.
New Addition to DiagnosTEX front office staff
Ashlea Good joined our DTEX family last month and has taken Bea’s position next to Katie. Everyone will likely be talking to her a lot. She is already settling in and we know she will be a great fit at DTEX! Welcome her next time you talk to her on the phone! Judith Teune is a new addition to our billing staff; we are so excited she here, she brings some good experience to our team!
DTEX November Schedule
DiagnosTEX is already celebrating 1 year at our new office location at 8913 Mid Cities Blvd, #100 in North Richland Hills. We will be closed on Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, November 25th and then also on Friday the 26th, to count our blessings 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 all of them!
Holiday Season
Please keep our holiday schedules in mind when scheduling your MBSS at the end of November and December! 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 only for time, efficiency and operational cost. This has been our business model for the last 18 years. If your patient’s personal 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 customized days and time schedules.
DiagnosTEX is not a STAT service. Any emergency concerns the patient may have need to be seen at the ER. DiagnosTEX is an independent physician clinic/office and operates under normal physician office hours Monday through Thursday with an occasional Friday. Fridays are typically a day we use to service and deep clean 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.
Home Health
Under Medicare rules, to be eligible for Home Health all individuals with Part A and/or Part B who meet all of these conditions are covered:
- You must be under the care of a doctor, and you must be getting services under a plan of care created and reviewed regularly by a doctor.
- You must need, and a doctor must certify that you need, one or more of these: Intermittent skilled nursing care (other than drawing blood) Physical therapy, speech-language pathology, or continued occupational therapy services.
- You must be homebound, and a doctor must certify that you’re homebound.
One of the most difficult scheduling issues for DiagnosTEX is that patients are not home when we try to schedule or they are unable to be at home at the time offered due to their busy personal schedule outside of the home. Due to the requirements to qualify for HH, specifically being homebound, DiagnosTEX will attempt to schedule with home health patients no more than 3x, and then they will be removed from the pending list with documentation stating they were unavailable to be seen after 3 attempts due to scheduling conflicts.
DiagnosTEX Outpatient Clinic
Unfortunately, the ongoing pandemic issues has delayed the opening of our NRH outpatient clinic in 2021, but we have HIGH hopes for 2022. Stay tuned!
DiagnosTEX CE Conference
We had hoped and planed for a 2021 in-person Fall conference. COVID again, interrupted our best of intentions. We will look forward to 2022! We can’t wait to get together with everyone again! DiagnosTEX will have a booth at FW TSHA convention in 2022, if it successfully makes.
November CE – Deciphering Dysphagia with Ampcare’s ESP™ (Effective Swallowing Protocol)
On-Demand + Live Zoom Webinar Saturday, November 13, 2021 9 am – 1 pm CST (10 am – 2 pm EST)
*8 Hours Advanced ASHA CE. To register online go to: https://swallowtherapy.com/product/webinar-course/
DiagnosTEX Dysphagia Calendar is back for 2022! Available in December when we see you!
IT BACK!!!!!! DiagnosTEX Anatomy Clipboard has returned by popular demand
These will also be available in December! If you use our service, you will get one when we see you, while supplies last. If not, they will be available for purchase on our website www.dysphagiadiagnostex.com under the tab SHOP.
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. Never overlook the importance of this population’s need for dysphagia evaluations and proper diets.