Excellent Care
from Dedicated Speech Therapists

Three things, often together: speech and language problems such as aphasia after a stroke, cognitive-communication problems including memory and word finding, and swallowing disorders.

Swallowing is frequently the most urgent of the three, because it carries a direct risk of choking and aspiration pneumonia. Families often call about speech and discover at the evaluation that swallowing is the more pressing problem.

Yes, and it is the most common reason for it. Stroke is the leading cause of aphasia, and approximately one third of stroke survivors have it.

Therapy works on regaining language, building workarounds where function does not fully return, and training the family in how to communicate. That last part matters more than families expect. Aphasia leaves intelligence intact, so being talked around is its own injury.

An assessment of how safely the client swallows different food and liquid textures, done in the home at an actual meal rather than in a clinic.

The therapist then recommends texture changes, positioning and techniques that reduce aspiration risk, and trains the family and caregiver to apply them. Roughly 47 percent of stroke patients experience difficulty swallowing, and it is a leading route to readmission.

Yes, with a physician’s order, a skilled need and homebound status. Medicare does not require copayments or a deductible for covered home health services.

Private pay speech therapy is available when those criteria are not met, which is common for clients whose Medicare episode has ended but whose recovery has not. No physician order is needed for the private route.

As soon as the physician clears it. Recovery is generally strongest in the early months, so the handoff from hospital or rehab to home therapy should not have a gap in it.

We regularly pick up patients the same week they are discharged. If a discharge date is set, arrange the home therapy before it rather than after, because a two-week gap while referrals are sorted out is two weeks of the best recovery window.

It can, though the goal is different. Rather than restoring lost language, therapy focuses on keeping communication working as long as possible and simplifying how information is given.

It also addresses the swallowing changes that appear in later-stage dementia, which families often do not anticipate and which carry the same aspiration risk as they do after a stroke.

Yes, and for swallowing precautions it is essential rather than optional.

The therapist trains the caregiver on the recommended textures, positioning and cues, and the caregiver applies them at every meal. Precautions followed once a week during a visit and ignored at the other twenty meals do not reduce risk.