Speech-Language Pathologists In Long-Term Care

Speech-Language Pathologists in Long-Term Care At the beginning of my senior year in high school, I was still having trouble deciding what I wanted to do with my life. My mom, who works as a COTA in nursing homes, always pushed me towards nursing or physical therapy. Neither occupation interested me, nursing was too broad of a topic for me to handle and physical therapy seemed too difficult. A friend of mine brought up Speech-Language Pathology one day, a term I was unfamiliar with. I researched the strange word “pathology” and was surprised that I found the profession interesting. I conducted a PowerPoint on this career in my writing class, shortly after my interest in Speech-Pathology began. After I gave my presentation, there was no doubt

Some days are spent giving screenings or evaluations to new patients, to create a starting point for their treatment. Other days are spent with a variety of different disorders and treatments, followed by tedious note-taking on each patient seen (SLPs in Long-Term Care). A part of the day could be spent with a patient who has recently had a stroke and now has irreversible dementia. While another part of the day could be spent monitoring the eating and swallowing techniques a patient uses during a meal. No day is the same, there is no routine to memorize. The average stay of a patient in long-term care is 35 days, so there is a constant flow of new cases (SLPs in Long-Term Care). That is what has drawn me to nursing homes, the variety of disorders and patients. In a nursing home a Speech-Language Pathologist won’t always have to work alone. While seeing a patient, a Speech-Language Pathologist might work along side an Occupational Therapist or a Physical Therapist (SLPs in Long-Term Care). In Long-Term Care there are two different types of Medicare programs a Speech-Pathologist will have to work with (SLPs in Long-Term Care). Medicare Part A requires an SLP to work with a patient for a certain amount of time, and not a minute over. This is determined by the patient’s MDS (minimum data set). Which means the minimum amount of rehabilitation minutes the patient must receive depending on what payment group the patient is a part of (SLPs in Long-Term Care). These minutes include Occupational Therapist and Physical Therapy as well. A Speech-Language Pathologist must be able to communicate with the other professionals, making sure each patient is getting the correct amount of minutes in each day. The other type of Medicare a Speech-Language Pathologist must identify with is Medicare Part B. Medicare Part B is put into place when patients from Medicare Part A have used all of their minutes, but