Clinical Affairs News

 VP for Clinical Services, 
Sharon Sowder, M.A., CCC-SLP

The following areas are some of the areas addressed by the Clinical Services/Affairs section of MSHA: 

Reimbursement Issues with Medicare, Medicaid, and Private Insurance

Minority Student Leadership Program

Member Education

Clarification of CPT Codes and Billing

Licensure Issues

Assistance with interaction with other professionals about the services we provide and our Scope of Practice

STAR Representative to ASHA

Consumer Advocacy

Health Insurance Advocacy

For more information or to express interest in any of the above mentioned areas, please contact me via e-mail at meow1117200@yahoo.com.

DOCUMENTATION EXAMPLES FOR COGNITIVE DISORDERS

Language/Cognitive Disorder - Evaluation Summary
Evaluation of patient’s deficits indicated expressive aphasia.  This disorder was characterized by anomia (naming disorder).  Patient was unable to recall names of persons, places, and/or objects to communicate basic and medical needs.  Patient could, however, follow simple directions and could recall the names of common objects when compensatory techniques were introduced (paring of auditory/visual stimuli) suggesting that the patient would benefit from skilled intervention.  Patient also demonstrated attention deficits which made it difficult for patient to concentrate on evaluation materials.  Additional training and instruction will be needed to help patient improve their ability to focus on therapeutic tasks so that language skills can improve.

Progress Notes: Language/Cognitive Deficits
Visit One:  Patient seen to improve word naming skills.  Patient trained in use of auditory and visual stimuli to facilitate verbal expression related to medical needs.  Additional training to improve attention to therapeutic task provided (tactile cueing).  Attentional training procedures helped patient focus on auditory/visual stimuli and enabled patient to recall names of body parts and medications necessary for patient’s care.

Speech/Cognitive Deficits - Evaluation Summary
Patient’s deficits were characterized by moderate dysarthria affecting ability to produce clear speech for basic and medical needs.  Tongue and lip strength and range of motion were not adequate for production of understandable speech.  Potential for improvement, however, is positive since patient has partial control of tongue and lip muscles and can follow directions.  Additional deficits include a mild cognitive disorder characterized by short term memory problems and reasoning difficulties.  Training and instruction in use of specific compensatory strategies (visual aids and reduction in use of specific compensatory strategies (visual aids and reduction in rate of word and phrase presentation) should adequately address the cognitive deficits so that the patient can benefit from training and instruction to improve speech intelligibility for the expression of basic and medical needs.

Progress Notes: Speech/Cognitive Deficits
Visit One:  Patient seen to improve speech intelligibility related to medical needs.  Trained to increase tongue range of motion.  Visual aids introduced as necessary to compensate for short term memory disorder.  Pictures presented helped patient identify target tongue positions in oral cavity.  This resulted in improved pronunciation of words beginning with /l/, /t/, and/d/ sounds (leg/teeth/doctor).