Bill Klaproth (Host): Outpatient rehabilitation can help patients recover from injury or illness. Tideland’s Next Step Rehabilitation Services offer physical therapy, occupational therapy and speech therapy customized to each patient’s individual needs. To help us learn more about speech therapy at Tidelands, is Luann Mezzetesta, a Tidelands Health speech therapist. Luann, thank you for your time. So, can you first give us a brief overview of the speech therapy program at Tidelands Health?

Luann Mezzatesta (Guest): Yes. Here at Tideland’s Health we have pediatric and adult speech therapy. I'm actually a pediatric therapist but we have in-patient adult and pediatric therapy and out-patient adult and pediatric therapy across 12 locations outpatient and then two inpatient locations.

Bill: So, you offer pediatric and adult speech therapy. So, can you talk about each one of those? Who would be a candidate or who would be a child that who would come to see you and then, can you also talk about an adult that would come to see you. Who are the proper candidates that would benefit most from your service.

Luann: Sure. Well, a speech therapist by trade is called a “speech language pathologist”, and that should give you some indication that we have a lot to do because the name is so long. But, essentially, a child who would come to see us--may be a child who needs help in any aspect of communication from speech, like articulation or voice or fluency which is often in a stuttering--or a child who is having trouble developing their language, whether it was how they understand other people, how they can express themselves or even social language. Most commonly, it is a combination or all of these things. Children can also have issues cognitively with memory or with auditory processing, also with hearing. And then, we also delve into feeding and swallowing. So, we’re kind of a one-stop shop for all of those things. So, any child who had issues with any of those areas would potentially come to see us and an adult would pretty much be the same way--speech, language, auditory or listening or hearing issues as well as cognition, memory, feeding and swallowing. The main difference with children and adults is typically a child hasn’t, what we would consider, developed the skills, typically, and an adult has usually gotten an acquired illness, whether it be a stroke or having surgery or a host of other things that could potentially happen that would require them to need therapy.

Bill: So, you certainly offer a wide range of services. Can you tell us how you assess each individual that comes to see you?

Luann: Right. First of all, we would try to get a referral that gives us enough information so we know which avenue to go down from the beginning. Say, the doctor will send us a note or a prescription with a diagnosis on it, and then we read any information that they’ve given us and, essentially, we make some preliminary decisions, but when the patient walks in and we get to see them--in my instance, children--I will discuss with their parent what their main concerns are and then make my final decision in terms of what sort of evaluation I would perform. Most of the time, I perform a language and a speech assessment on our children but sometimes, obviously, I would do a different test depending on the needs of that particular child.

Bill: Right. Then, after that assessment, you formulate a plan custom to that individual?

Luann: Yes, sir. They’re called a “plan of care”. We discuss with the parent what their goals are for therapy and we let them know what the child’s diagnosis is relative to other children their same age, most of the time. And that would maybe be what their age equivalent is and where their language and speech fall in relation to the child’s same age peers. And then we would decide how we want to go about moving forward--what is the most important thing to work on first.

Bill: So, you have a goal set in mind of where you want that child, and for the speech therapists that work with adults, same thing--you kind of have a benchmark that you want to reach, right?

Luann: Exactly. We use standardized tests for that reason. A lot of insurance companies do require us to use standardized assessments now. So, we have a plethora here that are available for us to pick from essentially based on what is best for that individual patient. The adult clinics have the same options and they can specialize in that assessment so they can get to the heart of the matter for each child.

Bill: Right. Luann, does this work like physical therapy where they come to you for a time and then, after they reach a certain point, they’re left to continue their therapy on their own?

Luann: Yes, in a way. In the adult clinics, it is definitely a lot like that where they come for a shorter period of time, say, maybe 12 weeks, maybe 24 weeks--something like that. They would come multiple times a week. But, in the exact same time they’re doing their actual treatment, they’re doing what we call a home exercise program and those are given as early as the day of the evaluation in hopes that patients and caregivers can carry over the treatment strategies that are used successfully to increase the effectiveness of the treatment.

Bill: And, is that the general timeframe? You mentioned 12 weeks to 24 weeks. Is that a good rule of thumb?

Luann: Possibly more that would fit in an adult world. In a child’s world, became there are, like I mentioned, so many areas to focus on, if a child is not developing their communication skills in a typical fashion, we may end up delving down many avenues and the child may be in therapy a long time. It also depends on concomitant factors, like if they have specific diagnoses, for instance, of cerebral palsy or autism or seizure disorders or other therapy needs. We also, in our clinics, as you mentioned earlier, have occupational therapy and physical therapy available. So, they may need lots of therapies to.

Bill: Right. Luann, why should someone choose Tidelands Health for their speech therapy needs?

Luann: Well, as I mentioned earlier, we have many locations. So, anyone within a safe driving distance from one of our offices could potentially get the help that they need. We have options for neurological-based therapy as well as pediatric that would specialize in feeding, swallowing, speech, language, memory and even augmentative communication. We are a very small place, relatively speaking, to the world, but we have so many things to offer that I don’t believe anyone else in a safe driving distance can offer the way we can.

Bill: That’s terrific. Luann, if someone who’s listening right now is interested in speech therapy at Tidelands, is there a general number or a website they can go to learn more?

Luann: They can definitely go to the Tidelands Health website which is www.tidelandshealth.org and they can look up Next Step Rehabilitation. They can also call the main hospital number . But, if someone was really interested in speech therapy, they could call our office directly and we could forward them on where they needed to do, and that number is 843-520-8810.

Bill: Luann, thank you so much for your time today. Thank you for talking to use about the speech therapy program at Tidelands Health. And, as Luann says, you can learn more about Tidelands Health physicians, services and facilities. Just visit www.tidelandshealth.org. That’s www.tidelandshealth.org. This is Better Health Radio. I'm Bill Klaproth. Thanks for listening.