physician evaluation prior to dysphagia eval

[Guest guest]

I have a question I would like to post to the group.

I am the rehab manager for 6 skilled nursing facilities. We recently became

" in-house: employees as we were with a contract company before. I have spent

the last year finding out that the contract company we were working for before

was not having the therpists following all of the necessary procedures. I think

I have just ran into another example.

One of my speech therapists brought to my attention that Medicare requires that

a physician evaluate and establish a diagnosis prior to the speech therpist

performing an eval. There appears to be fairly specific information that

Medicare is looking for. Currently we just are going on admitting diagnosis or

physican notes from previosu visits. I am dreading bringing this up to our

Doc.'s as it is hard enough to get them to sign our POC's on time. My question

is, what do other facilities do for their dysphagia evals? Are there certain

forms you have the Doc.'s fill out? Any advice would be greatly appreciated?

Zandex Healthcare

Zanesville, Ohio