FOR REHAB DIRECTORS

We understand that you have the extremely overwhelming task of scheduling therapy minutes for all the patients, staying within their allotted RUG levels, all while keeping all of your therapists as productive as possible. So needless to say when a wrench is thrown in your plans, it throws the whole train off the tracks. Case in point: the MBSS. Most often, the facility Speech Pathologist is tasked when ordering an MBSS with calling central scheduling at the local hospital. This simple phone call can sometimes take up 30 minutes! Yes, really, good-bye productivity! Now thats just the start. When the patient has to go to the hospital for the MBSS, the actual procedure only lasts 4 minutes, but the patient is usually gone from the facility for about 4 hours – between the time for transport, early arrival to complete all of the paperwork, the actual assessment, etc. Then when the patient returns to the facility and all of the therapists are lined up and salivating to get their minutes, the patient refuses, as they are just plain exhausted. Before you know it, you’ve missed an entire day of PT/OT/ST minutes for one 4 minute assessment.

Now, the patient has come back from completing the MBSS, but the report is nowhere in sight. All of nursing, dietary, and the medical director all want the results yesterday from the Speech Pathologist so that the appropriate changes can be made in all systems. But the report is nowhere to be found. The Speech Pathologist now spends the rest of her day defending to all of the staff that he/she understands the patient “passed” (whatever that means), but they haven’t seen the report yet to write the orders because the Speech Pathologist and Radiologist at the hospital have 15 more reports to type up before this patient’s and before they send them to Medical Records, where they can sit for up to a week.

Now what if I told you that an assessment exists where the Speech Pathologist can not only be present, but participate, give their clinical judgement, and bill for their treatment minutes? Not only do they know EXACTLY what happened during the assessment, but they are handed a crisp report with colorful images IMMEDIATELY after the study. No wondering what the heck happened at the study, or tracking down the report for years to come, or fighting off every colleague in the building because you just want to yell over the loudspeaker that you have not received the MBSS report yet. It has been shown that facilities that utilize mobile FEES services instead of sending their patients out for MBSS maintain higher and more consistent levels of productivity. Go ahead and put your feet up now, you deserve it!