Peggy Watson, MS, CCC-SLP Nancy Shadowens, MS, CCC-SLP

Peggy Watson, MS, CCC-SLP is a Speech-Language Pathologist with more than 20 years of experience working the geriatric population. She has practiced in home health care, acute care hospitals, rehab hospitals and long term care/skilled care nursing facilities. In addition, she has worked in the university setting as an adjunct faculty member with graduate students working on their clinical practicum. Ms. Watson specializes in dementia intervention including the areas of communication, mobility, socialization, behaviors and dysphagia. Ms Watson has consulted in various facilities from initial development to enhancement of effectiveness of existing dementia programs.

Nancy Shadowens, MS, CCC-SLP is a Speech-Language Pathologist specializing in skilled dementia therapy. She is responsible for the development and implementation of multidisciplinary dementia program to help increase the quality of life of adults diagnosed with dementia as well as meeting Medicare's stringent dementia reimbursement requirements. Ms. Shadowens' areas of expertise include dementia, augmentative communication, dysphagia/adults and aphasia as well as being Vital Stim certified. She has focused her time on creating hands-on, evidence-based interventions as well as creative activities that have been proven to maintain function in the geriatric patient.

Today there are over 44 million Medicare recipients. It is estimated that when all the baby boomers are enrolled, there will be 77 million. Dementia will certainly claim its share. How does a therapist justify placing a dementia patient on his or her caseload when the traditional therapy model of 'improvement' is not going to be the outcome? The word therapy implies that you are going to help your patient achieve a higher level of functioning than they had when you began. For patients with dementia, this is not the case. Will Medicare reimburse for those who continue to decline along the dementia timeline? The answer is yes. Medicare will reimburse for treatment provided to patients with dementia. However, skilled dementia therapeutic intervention differs from the traditional therapy model. The goal of therapy with dementia is to provide for functional ADL safety by management of mobility, communication, behaviors, socialization and dysphagia.

The increasingly relevant seminar provides participants with effective evaluation and treatment strategies to preserve safety and quality of life for the patient, including improving balance and mobility, decreasing falls, repetitive behaviors, catastrophic outburst (negative behaviors), rummaging, wandering and many other dementia-induced behaviors. Therapists are responsible for understanding Medicare guidelines for dementia and for writing proper goals driven by these guidelines to reduce denials for their facility and build facility reimbursement. This course delivers evidence-based knowledge demonstrated by the presenters successful development and implementation of multidisciplinary dementia programming. You will learn specific steps to identify appropriate candidates for a dementia program, write appropriate goals, produce interventions for successful goal outcomes, and develop maintenance programs which can include free or low-cost activities for dementia patients.

Occupational Therapists, Physical Therapists, Assistants, Speech-Language Pathologists, Recreation Therapists, and any other health care professionals who are interested in increasing their effectiveness with patients with dementia.

This program provides 6 contact hours


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