Today is Matt’s 27th birthday.  From where we were 1 year ago, we’ve come along way, still not where we need to be but we are in a much better place and continuing to move forward.  Things are still improving and we are still working very hard daily to get Matt back.  The latest is Matt is set to go to SDSU speech the beginning of June thru July, Spencer still comes out every Monday, Wednesday and Friday and we have now come to the point once again having to confront Kaiser Permanente with a grievance.  The continuing issue of a very basic test for speech progression.  Kaiser has and is continuing to deny a Modified Barium Swallow test (MBS test) which simply put is a visual evaluation of Matt’s swallow reflex.  With this test they actually film Matt’s swallow to be sure the mechanics are all working well.  When Matt went to Sharpe Speech the very first thing Lance the speech therapist at Sharpe ordered was the MBS test.  Kaiser denied it then.  We also pursued this test months before while Matt was still in the hospital Kaiser Zion.  Kaiser denied it then.  We took Matt to Kaiser speech when he was first home, once again Kaiser denied the MBS test.  The Kaiser justification then was that “the MBS test was not conclusive therefore Kaiser would not pay for it as well as Matt is being fed through a feeding tube and that eating orally is a unnecessary luxury that Kaiser should not have to pay for.”  Now we have interviewed several private speech therapist for home speech therapy and they all tell us the only way to safely get Matt to eat food is for him to have a MBS test.  We are now in the process of gathering the documentation from the speech therapist that are strongly recommending this very basic, necessary and standard in the industry test so we can go back to the corporate criminals at Kaiser and make them pay for this or have to explain away another denial to the State.  We did ask the clinicians at SDSU who also strongly recommended this test and that is something they don’t do at SDSU for lack of equipment and the facility to do that kind of test.  This whole process is going to take a while so we do continue to give Matt a very little bit of food orally as well as give him water orally so he does not loose his desire and ability to eat and drink orally until this gets resolved.  I have also tried calling another facility to find out what this would cost privately and they won’t even give me a cost and they tell me that the only way they can perform this test is with a doctors order and that puts us right back to depending on the Kaiser system.  It’s such a screwed up system and when you are trapped  in this system like Matt is at this time, there are no alternatives and the corporates direct what kind of treatment you have access to and if you just go along with it, would have a very direct influence on what kind of outcome you as a patient would have.  But they do make the money don’t they.

Anyways, we will continue to advocate for Matt and get through this frustrating situation and move on to the next.  By the way, we did have a very nice birthday party for Matt, kept it small so he wasn’t overwhelmed and it turned out very nice.  A few close friends and relatives.  Everyone seemed to have a good time including Matt.  Lisa and I have also made the decision to get Matt out every week to the beach, movies, museums, restaurants etc.  He does very well with all of it and we are all seeing it as part of his therapy and is noticeably making a difference in his recovery. 

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