TherapyTimes
September, 2014 / Volume 2, Number 9
In This Issue
- SeptemberUpdates
- President's Update
- PPHC Is Now on Facebook & Twitter
- Fall Referral Bonus Program
- Behavioral Therapy Approved by Medicaid
- Annual Family Appreciation Event Success
- Flu Vaccination Required
- Sensory & Behavior Therapy In-Service
- Enterovirus D68
- Human Resource Update
- PPHC Clients Available
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Company Website
Contact Us!
Jennifer Rahrer,Director of Therapy
303-747-4021
jrahrerpediatrichomecare.com
Victoria Manley,Med Records Specialist
303-747-6203
Patty Orlowski, Therapy Coordinator
303-747-6271
Ann Martin, Administrator
303-747-4018
Chelsea Preiss, Payroll/HR Asst.
720-924-3558
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September Updates
Don't miss outstanding Sensory & Behavioral Strategies Speaker and In-Service next week! RSVP requiredImportant Reminders : 1)Call the Family within 24hours of taking the referral from Patty 2) Call Patty and tell her your SOC date so we can send an SOC order 3) Call Patty and let her know if your SOC date changes(even by just 1or 2 days)
We Are Always Adding New Clients - Make Sure You Check On-Line for the Latest Update
Flu Vaccine Required by ALL Direct Care Providers by 12/31/14
PPHC Fall Referral Bonus Program-$250 Bonus to current PPHC Therapists for referral and hire of new PPHC therapist or nurse. See details below!
Mark Bruning, President & CEO
Dear PPHC colleagues,I had some recent opportunities to sit in on a few care conferences, one in the home for a pending discharge from skilled nursing and another at Children's Hospital for a child we will be receiving in the near future. I had a number of observations from those encounters that I would like to share with you.
First, we were clearly appreciated and acknowledged by both families and other medical professionals for the quality nursing care and therapies you deliver to our patients - I heard that loud and clear from both meetings. I was also impressed with the way our nurses and therapists interacted with patients and their families, especially other kids, as well as each other and hospital staff. Finally, I gained a far greater appreciation of the coordination of effort and communication that takes place over the course of care, both interagency and with other ancillary medical providers.
Not that any of this was exactly startling news to me, I had done some due diligence on the company prior to coming on board and I knew PPHC enjoyed a pretty good reputation amongst its patients and many of our referral sources, including The Children's Hospital. In over 30 years of serving the Metro Denver community, the company had quietly grown to become the largest specialized pediatric home-based, private-duty skilled nursing and therapy provider in the state.
Still, I recognized the potential that PPHC had to grow further and more importantly, go from being a good company to becoming a great one. Not that it would be an easy task or overnight journey, but PPHC had all the ingredients necessary, starting first with a solid foundation of passionate caregivers and a long-standing commitment to clinically-focused patient care.
A large part of that effort will be centered on understanding what areas we can further improve in and where our resources and attention needs to be focused. We are in the process of finalizing an electronic survey we will be sending out to you in the near future that elicits your thoughts and opinions on a number of topics. The information gathered in the survey will be collected and used to help us plan and resource our future steps as an organization with the end goal of providing an even better patient care experience for our families and community. The data we receive is anonymous and presented in context of all of the responses, so I would hope people take the time to be thoughtful and share their valuable insights and ideas. Finally, we will share with you the results and what steps we are taking in response as we formulate our plans.
I look forward to having future opportunities to spend more time with many of you and learn more about what you do and how we can drive better patient care and outcomes at sustainable costs . I am always open to hearing from you and I promise to share with you, in a variety of ways, timely updates and information on what PPHC is doing to become an even better provider and partner to our patients, families and customers.
Best,
Mark
Sensory and Behavior Strategies In-Service
PPHC and Therapy South Zone are hosting Tracy Stackhouse, Colorado native, president and co-founder of Developmental FX.Tracy is a leading pediatric occupational therapist (OT) involved in clinical treatment, research, mentoring, and training regarding OT intervention for persons with neurodevelopmental disorders, especially Fragile X Syndrome and autism.
When: October 6, 2014
Where: ARC6538 S Racine Cir, Centennial, CO 80111
Time: 5pm Social hour (food will be served)
6pm – 7pm Presentation
7pm – 7:30 Discussion
You will also be able to complete your yearly competency if you haven’t already done so.
All therapists are invited!
Please RSVP to .
PPHC is Kicking Off the Fall
With A
2014 Internal
Referral Program
September 1st-October 15th
$250 Bonus
Professional Pediatric Home Care is searching for qualified Colorado nurses and therapists to fill current and potential cases. We want you to refer great professionals like yourself to help us continue to build our ALL-STAR Team!
Please refer any potential nurse or therapist to our website at to apply or send their resume to Chris Wood at by October 15, 2014. We will do the rest!!
*$250 referral fee will be paid to a PPHC provider for each nurse or therapist they refer who is hired and works at least one shift or commits to two or more patients.
Flu Vaccination Season is Here
The Colorado Dept of Health now requires all direct care providers to have a flu vaccination. By 12/31/14 all hospitals/nursing homes/home health agencies are required to show a vaccination rate of 90% of direct care providers. Please send us your 2014-15 vaccination documentation before 12/31/14. Thanks, I know this creates a dilemma for some, I'm just enforcing the requirement. If you have strong feelings about the requirement, please contact CDPHE and/or your State Representative and let them know. There is a plethora of peer reviewed data that you may review on line as well. We just need to show CDPHE a 90% rate by the end of 2014. Please keep our kids safe and get your flu vaccination! If you choose not to be vaccinated, we will be making random phone calls to your families to be sure you are wearing a MASK at all times during patient interactions.PPHC Families May Receive In Home Emotional and Behavioral Therapy
At Denver Family Counseling Services we provide care, insight and psychological expertise to individuals and families with special needs. Our heart is to help families who are struggling with having a special needs family member, or children who are acting out behaviorally or emotionally due to medical challenges, emotional or behavioral diagnosis that does not include Autism. Although mild autism is a diagnosis we can help with, moderate to severe autism requires a much more specialized form of treatment called ABA therapy.What we can do and desire to do, is help individuals and families learn how to function effectively with a variety of other emotional and physical issues that occur when there are special needs that need attending to. For questions to see if your referral may be appropriate for our services, please don’t hesitate to contactl Lesley Goth, PsyD.
Lesley Goth, PsyD is a licensed clinical psychologist and owner of Denver Family Counseling Services. She has recently become a Medicaid approved provider and is offering her services in home for PPHC families. If you have a family interested, please contact her at 303-217-1822 or .
PPHC Annual Family Appreciation PPHC Family Round Up A Great Success
Thank you for sharing this fun event with your families. We had over 170 join us for BBQ, music, activities and lots of laughter! We look forward to next year - Ye-Haw!!!Therapy Patient Referral Process
Please remember to give one week notice to Barb Lohr prior to start of care date.Also, make sure to include the following information for ALL patient referrals:
Name of Child
Date of Birth
Address
Parent/Guardian Name & Phone Number
DX
PCP - include number & fax number
Insurance or Medicaid
What Therapies
Name of Person Making Referral & Phone Number
If you have any questions, please contact Barb at .
Like Us On FaceBook & Twitter
Please like us on FaceBook at:
And follow Us on Twitter @PediatricCareCO.
We are excited to share resources, industry updates, educational opportunities, upcoming events and family successes! Make sure to encourage your families to post pictures and follow us too!
Post-Immunization Epilepsy Likely Not Related to Vaccine: Study
By Anne HardingNEW YORKTue Sep 16, 2014 4:38pm EDT
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Children who start having seizures soon after a vaccination and go on to develop epilepsy usually turn out to have an underlying cause of the seizure disorder, according to a new study published in Pediatrics."It's reassuring to hear that with follow-up testing, the vast majority of these cases can be identified as coming from a different cause," Dr. Shannon MacDonald told Reuters Health.
"These types of studies are important because parents have a right to expect that we take vaccine safety seriously and that we investigate any potential adverse events following immunization," added MacDonald, who studies vaccine safety and parents' decision-making about vaccines at the University of Calgary but wasn’t involved in the new research.Some babies and young children are prone to have convulsions, or seizures, when they develop a high fever. One in 25 children will have at least one of these events, known as febrile seizures, according to the US National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS). While febrile seizures can be frightening to parents, they usually are brief and cause no harm.
In the days after receiving a vaccine, compared to other times, children are two to five times more likely to have a febrile seizure, according to the authors of the new study."When a child has its first seizure shortly after a vaccination, and continues to have seizures thereafter, parents may think the vaccination has caused the epilepsy. However, in our study the majority of children who developed epilepsy after a vaccination, had a genetic or structural cause of the epilepsy," Dr. NienkeVerbeek, a clinical geneticist at University Medical Centre Utrecht in The Netherlands, told Reuters Health. "In these children, the vaccination should only be considered a trigger for the first seizure that thereby unmasks the child’s underlying susceptibility for epilepsy," Verbeekadded.Roughly one in every 100 healthy, normally developing children will develop epilepsy after a febrile seizure, according to NINDS, but children with certain conditions, including cerebral palsy and developmental delay, are at greater risk.
To better understand the relationship between febrile seizures and epilepsy, the researchers looked at nearly a thousand children who had a first seizure within several days of being vaccinated. Twenty-six of the children were later diagnosed with epilepsy, and the researchers were able to follow up with 23 of them.Eight of the children had Dravet syndrome, a rare genetic condition in which seizures may be brought on by fever, infectious disease, or vaccination. Three of the children had developmental delays and structural brain defects that could cause epilepsy. Four other children had gene mutations that could cause epilepsy, brain malformations, or a family history of the disease.
"Although no underlying cause was detected in one-third of children with epilepsy with vaccination-related onset, a genetic basis of epilepsy in these children is still possible: genetic analyses were incomplete, some children had positive family histories for seizures, and molecular defects underlying many genetically determined epilepsies have yet to be discovered," Verbeek and her colleagues write. "For parents it is important to understand that a genetic cause (a so called DNA-mutation) for epilepsy cannot be induced by vaccinations," Verbeek told Reuters Health. " These mutations are already present in the child before it is born. They may have been transmitted by one of the parents, but more commonly have occurred spontaneously around the time of conception. "The findings “provide a pretty strong case that this was not caused by the vaccination,” Dr. Jorn Olsen told Reuters Health in a telephone interview. Olsen, a professor at Aarhus University in Denmark and at UCLA who has studied febrile seizures and epilepsy, added, “They probably would have gotten epilepsy in every case so that the disease was present at least for some of these already at the time when they had the vaccination.”
SOURCE: bit.ly/1tZc99l Pediatrics, online September 15, 2014.
Enterovirus D68 (EV-D68)
Too Hello. I'm Dr. Susan Gerber, a medical epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). I'm speaking with you as part of the CDC Expert Commentary series on Medscape. You may have recently heard about a virus called enterovirus D68 (EV-D68) that has been causing severe respiratory illness among children in some states.Today I will talk about this virus and what we know so far about the current EV-D68 situation in the United States.
In August 2014, two hospitals in Missouri and Illinois started seeing more children with severe respiratory illness. These respiratory illnesses were more than expected compared with this time period in previous years. Many of the severe cases were later identified as EV-D68. Other states are investigating similar clusters of severe respiratory illness and are determining whether there are increases among patients in their hospitals.
From mid-August to September 11, 2014, a total of 82 people in Missouri, Illinois, and four other states Iowa, Kentucky, Colorado, and Kansas were confirmed to have EV-D68 infections. So far, no deaths attributed to EV-D68 infection have been documented.
EV-D68 is one of more than 100 types of enteroviruses. It was first identified in California in 1962. Since then, EV-D68 infections have not been commonly reported in the United States. In fact, EV-D68 infections are thought to occur less often than infections with some other enteroviruses. In general, the circulation of specific types of enteroviruses is often quite unpredictable, and different types of enteroviruses can be common in different years with no particular pattern. However, most enterovirus infections in the United States tend to occur in the summer and fall. EV-D68, similar to other enteroviruses, is known to cause infections primarily in children but has been known to infect adults.
EV-D68 can shed from an infected person's respiratory secretions, such as saliva, nasal mucus, or sputum. The virus likely spreads from person to person when an infected person coughs, sneezes, or touches surfaces. EV-D68 can cause mild to severe respiratory illness. Most of the children who became very ill with EV-D68 infection in Missouri and Illinois had difficulty breathing, and some had wheezing. Many of these children had asthma or a history of wheezing.
Although there are no vaccines to prevent EV-D68 infections, clinicians should encourage their patients to follow these prevention steps:
- Wash hands often with soap and water for 20 seconds;
- Avoid touching eyes, nose, and mouth with unwashed hands;
- Avoid kissing, hugging, and sharing cups or eating utensils with people who are sick; and
- Disinfect frequently touched surfaces, such as toys and doorknobs, especially if someone is sick.
- They should help ensure that patients with asthma regularly take prescribed medications and follow guidance to maintain control of their illness. They should also take advantage of influenza vaccine when available, because people with asthma have a difficult time with respiratory illnesses.
- When seeing patients, especially children, with respiratory illness, clinicians should be aware of EV-D68 as a potential cause. They should consider laboratory testing of respiratory specimens for enteroviruses when the cause of infection in severely ill patients is unclear. Many hospitals can test suspected patients for enteroviruses, but they are probably not able to do the testing needed to determine the type of enterovirus. Clinicians can approach their state health department for such testing. Clinicians should report clusters of severe respiratory illness to state and local health departments.
CDC will continue to share information and guidance with clinicians as it becomes available. Please visit the CDC's non-polio enterovirus website to obtain regular updates.
Dr. Susan Gerber is team lead for the Respiratory Viruses and Picornavirus Team, Division of Viral Diseases, at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). She received her MD from Loyola University and completed a pediatric residency and pediatric infectious disease fellowship at the University of Chicago. Dr. Gerber later joined the University of Chicago faculty in the section of pediatric infectious disease. Dr. Gerber acquired 14.5 years of experience in local public health with work on communicable diseases at the Cook County Department of Public Health and the Chicago Department of Public Health.
Human Resource Updates
By Chelsea Preiss, HR AssistantTo yoga or not to yoga, that is the question...
September is National Yoga Month
“For so long, I have heard about the benefits of yoga and have shrugged them off, thinking that you can’t get a good, effective workout laying