As Speech Pathologists, we are in the incredibly powerful position to greatly improve or drastically decrease someone’s quality of life. Have you ever felt awful about putting someone on a restricted diet because you thought you were making the best decision for them by decreasing their chances of aspiration? Or hearing that a patient or family hates you because you took away their coffee? Or having the administrator question whether you made the best recommendations because the family is now complaining about you? These are tough positions to be in. We get it. We’ve all been there. A mobile FEES procedure can answer all of these questions, and in fact has been shown to increase patient satisfaction ratings and quality of life in assisting with the decision making process related to oral intake. Wouldn’t you like to be the hero of your facility? You have the power to provide the patient and their family with comprehensive, valuable swallowing functioning information, and it is ultimately up to them and their doctor to make the best decisions for themselves. No patient has ever complained about making an informed decision for their own life, only when one has been forced upon them with no rationale to support it. Don’t arrest your patients. Be the hero.

A mobile FEES procedure provides objective, measurable data to prove medical necessity of speech therapy services and document progress, or lack thereof, and to justify accurate calculation of RUG levels. How many times have you doubted yourself as a clinician, wasn’t quite sure how to document the suspected problem, or just unsure which exercises to do? With a mobile FEES done in the patient’s natural environment, you are now able to confidently take the documented impairments and look up the most research based treatments for this underlying pathophysiology. No more arbitrary lingual exercises for everyone, real EVIDENCE-BASED patient-specific treatments. Having a mobile FEES done at the bedside allows for the flexibility of time. There are no radiation restrictions or barium limits that have to be followed. If you are suspecting fatigue with a patient, the study can be performed for the entire meal. Have you ever recommended a diet only to have the CNAs tell you that after 15 minutes he’s too tired to stay upright in his ‘perfect eating positioning’ and is coughing and choking on everything? The MBSS is great at giving us an objective snapshot of the swallow, but is not ideal for a patient that fatigues easily. A mobile FEES procedure provides a realistic assessment, and captures the “true picture” of what is happening at meals by the patient self feeding in his/her natural eating position over time.

Wait, you don’t have time in your overly productive day to call central scheduling and be on hold for 30 minutes to schedule an MBSS? We don’t either. Schedule a FEES by phone, text, email, or click the contact button at the top. Billing? That’s a no-brainer as well. Since the FEES CPT code is considered a Speech Therapy code, we follow Medicare’s Consolidated Billing Guidelines.

Our promise is that we will be to you within 1-2 business days from your request. If the family would like to be present, we are always flexible and willing to accommodate. We can come at a time convenient for you. You have productivity standards, we don’t! Also, you are able to bill the 92526 dysphagia treatment code WHILE assisting with the FEES procedure. You are NOT allowed to bill for the time that the scope is in the patient’s nose (usually 15 minutes), but all other time is productive, billable hours. We want you to be present, and we greatly value your input, as you know your patient best!

We always travel with snacks. (Who doesn’t?) But we are more than willing to use your kitchen’s food/thickened liquids (withOUT barium paste), as some facilities can differ greatly in their diet consistencies. We can also include ‘special requests’ or actual medication, whatever the patient wants to eat! Is your patient happy consuming the puree diet because he doesn’t want to wear those stupid dentures anymore anyways, but is always stealing the pancakes off his neighbor’s tray at breakfast? Have no fear, pancakes can be trialed!

How many times have you sent your patient out for an MBSS only to have them come back rejoicing that they passed and you’re left scrambling to find out what in the heck diet consistency “passed” means? This is especially fun on a Friday afternoon when no one from medical records at the hospital is answering the phone. We provide a detailed report (including color photos) to you BEFORE we leave. (We don’t want you to have to track us down on a Friday afternoon either, especially when Happy Hour is calling.) All reports and video recordings are backed up on secured, confidential storage for comparison of studies in future. We also can leave DVDs of the study upon request. Some medical directors often like to review the study as well. (And then you look real smart explaining to them what they are looking at.)