October 13, 2025 • 39 mins
In this episode of the Swallow Your Pride podcast, Theresa sits down with the founder of Melospeech (yes, that Melospeech!) to talk about her journey from overwhelmed CF to innovative entrepreneur building tech that finally makes documentation easier.
If you’re an SLP who’s done being bogged down by daily notes and wants to get back to focusing on actual clinical work, then this is for you.
Bonus: Givona is generously offering Swallow Your Pride listeners a FREE subscription to the SLPeaceBot™! Just visit https://www.slpeace.com and use code: PEACE4ME! at checkout.
The post 380 – From Burnout to Breakthrough: How Dr. Sandiford Built a Time-Saving Tool for SLPs appeared first on Swallow Your Pride Podcast.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:12):
Welcome to the Swallow Your Pride podcast. I'm
your host, Teresa Richard. I'm a board certified
specialist in swallowing and swallowing disorders,
a mobile thieves business owner, and founder of
the MedSLP collective.
This podcast is all about delivering the latest
evidence based practice to medical
SLPs everywhere.
Whether you're a new clinician seeking tangible tools
for treatment or a seasoned vet stuck in
(00:33):
a rut, my goal is to help ditch
the old school ways of the past that
no longer serve you or your patients, to
reinvigorate your passion for our field, to broaden
your knowledge about our scope of practice, and
to inspire you to practice at the top
of your license. So if you're listening, I
encourage you to swallow your pride, be open
and willing to learn because let's face it,
your patients deserve that kind of care. With
(00:54):
that, let's dive right in.
Just a quick disclaimer that all statements and
opinions expressed in this episode do not reflect
on the organizations associated with the speakers and
are their own opinions solely. Alright. Hello, everyone.
Welcome back to the show. Today on the
Swallow Your Pride podcast, we have doctor Jovona
Sandiford.
She is an award winning SLP, tech innovator,
(01:15):
and entrepreneur with nearly two decades of experience.
She is the founder of MelloSpeech,
a tech enabled
mobile speech therapy company launched during the COVID
nineteen pandemic to improve access for infants, toddlers,
and youth with disabilities in underserved communities.
A nationally recognized leader in early intervention and
health tech, doctor Sandiford was recently featured in
(01:36):
Cosmopolitan
c suite series for her work building inclusive,
high impact companies.
Under her leadership, Mello's speech was named one
of Fast Company's twenty twenty five best workplaces
for innovators joining past winners like Canva, Duolingo,
and Moderna.
She was also named a finalist in the
EdTech Awards by EdTech Digest in the leaders
(01:56):
in EdTech trends category.
Among the tools she has developed is the
SLP
spot, a speech therapy support platform that helps
clinicians save time and improve outcomes. Through innovation
and advocacy, doctor Sandeford is transforming how care
is delivered to families who need it most.
Hello, and welcome, my friend.
Hi. Good to be here. Thanks, Theresa. Yes.
(02:18):
Thank you so much for joining us. So
tell the people a little bit more about
yourself. Obviously, you're very, very, very accomplished. I
loved reading that bio, but tell us a
little bit more.
Yeah. I mean, I've been at SLP
over twenty years now.
It was a very rough start
in the field in my CF year,
being that my notes were subpoenaed,
(02:40):
in my clinical fellowship year for a lawsuit,
that a family I I don't believe I'm
able to speak on it. But, yeah, it
was a lawsuit, not concerning me, but my
notes were subpoenaed. So that was my introduction
to,
health care documentation.
And trust and believe that at that time,
we were doing
handwritten stuff looking like this. So that stuff
(03:02):
went up before the whole, you know, the
court and everything. So,
yeah, I've been in SLP a long time,
worked in every basically every part of the
field just trying to find the area where
I love, you know, the most.
Worked at the VA hospital,
with adults, worked at Kaiser and the ENT
department, worked in the schools, did private practice,
did skilled nursing facilities, did medically fragile,
(03:25):
and then finally just settled on on my
company, Mello Speech. We work with, Birth to
Ten, and we really love just using technology
to help more and more little ones in
their home environment. That's where we we serve
clients and virtually.
Awesome. Awesome. So share a little bit more
about this latest venture and how we stumbled
(03:45):
upon this.
Yeah. So, you know, I made my first
app in 2012
to help a family in need. I didn't
find what I was looking for, and, you
know, the iPad was pretty new around that
time. We were just getting into using it
in speech and like, hey. This is better
than carrying around all these boxes of toys.
So I had an early inter introduction
to technology.
(04:06):
And so
my team, the way we were working is
we were doing visits, and then we were
paying for, like, ten minutes of
note time on top of that. So we
would do, like, maybe seven or eight visits
in a day. And so then that would
be, like, eighty minutes seventy to eighty minutes
of note time that we would pay for
on top of that. And, you know, reimbursement
rates are going down for our field right
(04:26):
now. Like, they're they're just they don't go
up. They go down.
And so that was extra that we were
paying. And then some people would give out
notes that said something like showing progress.
Like, we would be going through doing an
audit, and we're like, what what's showing progress?
What did you work on? What how how
are they doing? And that would just literally
fail an audit. There's no way that we
pass an audit. On top of that, some
(04:46):
people were not doing notes at all. But
trust and believe they were getting paid for
that. Right?
Because we paid them no matter what.
And so I spoke with the team, and
we said we've gotta come up with a
way to streamline these notes. And this is
before this was, like, a common thing.
And so what we did is we said,
hey. There's gotta be a way to turn
that visit summary. You know, at the end
of every session, our team is required to
(05:09):
share with the family
how they're doing in the program,
the goals, that they're meeting, the goals going
forward, the home program. They're supposed to do
that. And so we thought, well, it's kinda
redundant for them to share that verbally and
then have to write it down as well,
and then we're not getting all the information.
So our first version of the SLP spot
was called the Mellow Peeps AI no bot.
(05:30):
Not very doesn't doesn't roll off your tongue.
Anyway, so we did that for about six
months, and we're like, hey. This is awesome.
These notes are very comprehensive.
Families are not asking us for copies of
notes anymore because they're literally hearing us talk
our note to them in a conversational way.
It's very secure because the bot doesn't listen
in on the whole session.
(05:50):
That's kinda like the popular tool right now
is, like, the AI bot listens in on
the whole session, and then it comes up
with something that may or may not be
what you meant it to say. But in
our case, whatever we put into the tool
is what it spits out in very nice,
clear language. And so that kind of ended
up saving us about 6 figures pretty quickly.
Right? Just calculate somebody getting paid 50 to
(06:12):
$70 an hour and then eighty eighty minutes,
you know, a a day, for example, because
eight sessions in a day. So it adds
up. And so our bookkeeper was like, wow.
This this tool is saving us money, but,
also, it was saving us time because our
team was not having to go home at
the end of a very, very long day
(06:34):
and say, hey, honey. I now I gotta
do my documentation. Just just give me an
hour to to type up whatever I remember
from the day.
So that was the first iteration of it.
So when we released it,
to our team, we loved it so much.
We went on this TV show I was
just telling you called The Blocks.
One of the judges was listening to some
of our tech, and she said, why don't
you release that to everybody? Because I feel
(06:54):
like everybody can benefit. And we're like, nah.
I mean, it's so easy. People are gonna
come up with something similar so fast. They'll
just, you know, make the same thing. She
said, well, you should still at least give
it a try. So we released the SLP
spot to 5,000
SLPs for free.
We had this great idea, and I was
just talking to Matt Hott. I think you
know him because he used to work together
(07:14):
on a podcast. But I was telling him
we made a a key so that only
SLPs would be able to try it for
free.
It was supposed to be a question that
was super easy for any SLP to answer,
like, what areas do we work with? And
it was something like 30% of SLPs just
failed that initial test and could not get
into the tool.
(07:35):
Oh, wow. They thought it was like a
trick question or or something, but
the ones who got in really helped us
fine tune it and make it something that
is really useful to SLPs today.
And now we have a new and this
is the last part of my long monologue.
But now we have a new portion of
it coming out where if somebody still wants
to do, like, this kinda handwritten
(07:56):
chicken scratch note,
this this will be out before this podcast
comes out, I'm sure, because we're launching it
this weekend.
They take a picture
of that
note. It could be really bad handwriting, and
the tool will generate a beautiful
session note just based on this, and they
can send it to multiple parties right there
instantly, including their own team. So Awesome. That's
(08:18):
the newest, yeah, that's the newest iteration. And
a lot of people that aren't so they
don't feel so comfortable dictating even though they're
talking to the family. They feel kinda odd
speaking into a tool.
This kinda lets them bypass that,
by doing something like that. So, yeah, that's
kinda how it came to, and and, again,
we use tons of tech in MelloSpeech. There's
(08:38):
just tons of it, but that's one of
them. And
we got this the other day for Congratulations.
Thank you. I was not there. Christine Yu,
one of our team in, New York City
picked it up for us. She's one of
our leadership team there, SLP in New York.
So thank you. Awesome. Congratulations.
Yeah. Yeah. Talk to me a little bit
(08:59):
more about,
the tool itself. So it's it's an app,
I'm assuming.
So it is a web based application. And
so what I learned when you click in,
it is really intuitive. My five year old,
when I was working on it, he just
automatically knew to click this microphone and just
start talking.
His note made no sense because it was
about being under a table for five hours
while mommy worked. He had no concept of
(09:21):
time. It was not five hours. It was
ten minutes. So in the settings, you can
change a lot of different things. So let's
say you're an SLP that works in a
school, and maybe you just say student.
We we set this to deidentify
by default.
So,
my theory has always been that, you know,
people can't steal what isn't there.
So if you don't put a client's name
(09:42):
into a note and for some reason this
has gets
somehow
in the encryption,
someone is able to get in, if they
get in and they say and they see
client, that's not PHI. You know what I
mean? So we de identify by default, but
you can also choose not to.
The system is very secure. We use zero
data retention. We have a business associate agreement
(10:03):
with our AI provider,
that also says that they do not save
anything.
And we also encrypt it. But like I
said, can't steal what's not there. So, you
can also choose over here in your clinician
title. We always say clinician, but SLP, SLPA,
therapist, other
other. I've seen some SLPs put evaluator on
here. Like, maybe they're doing an assessment,
(10:25):
and they would rather be called evaluator or
assessor.
And then you can also change the language.
So we provide services in eight languages currently.
Oh my gosh. That's incredible.
So say that your session was in Vietnamese
and you were talking to the to the
family in Vietnamese, but you want your note
to be in English. So maybe you're doing
your session summary in Vietnamese to the family,
(10:46):
but your note is still gonna come out
in English, or you could also change it
to a different language,
custom language. So that's really cool about LLMs
now,
large language is it large language models I
think that stands for?
Because they can access just, like, the entire
universe of languages. So as long as it's
a known language and you train it properly,
you can do that. You can change the
(11:08):
format of the note, and then the best
part for us is where the notes go.
So let's say that you have a family
that every time wants a copy of all
of your notes, Like, there's always that family.
You're like, oh, I gotta go back and
check my note and do all so you
can actually set this to,
send an email per note to the family.
And since it's de identified,
(11:29):
just goes to their email even if their
email isn't necessarily HIPAA compliant. Like, mine is
ours is HIPAA compliant, and it's just gonna
have general information. It's just gonna it puts
what you say into the note in a
nice clear way. So So that's a lot
of people are saying, well, is it gonna
pick up this? Is it gonna pick up
that? It picks up what you say. So
if you don't say it, it's not gonna
(11:50):
know to include some random fact,
but you can edit to include that. So
Does this work with other
electronic medical record systems? Like, does this talk
to them and upload it directly to them?
Yeah. That's a that's a great question. So
when we initially made this product, we we
reached out to a lot of, popular EMRs.
(12:11):
We were ahead of them. They didn't have
it yet. Right?
And what we found
is that they don't know who we are.
Right?
And, we then just gave them the idea,
and they went ahead and and created something
similar, though it's not specific to SLPs. We
found that when they tried to create something,
it just didn't work for us because it
couldn't do articulation notes. It didn't always understand
(12:32):
what we were saying in terms of our
technology, our our technological terms.
And so what we did instead is we
made a way to just,
send it to anyone you want. So for
us, we send it to our notes team.
And we pay just a virtual assistant, sometimes
an intern, just a few bucks to upload
it directly into the EMR.
And so what that looks like is there's
(12:54):
a downloaded file that you can just upload
into that client's chart each time depending on
your EMR. Some people like to copy and
paste it in there, but, we have not
been able to get the API to most
of those EMRs. Yep. That's that's the work
the second part. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
API. So that's like how that some of
them have an open API, and we can
work with those.
But most of them keep their API to
(13:15):
themselves. They don't want it to accept
things from other
sources that aren't, approved sources.
And so, the best way to do that
is either to copy and paste it directly
into your notes or, like we do, we
just upload it. So our team just when
they're done at the end of the day,
or at the end of the session, they
just hit send, and those notes go to
(13:36):
their supervisor, direct supervisor.
It goes to our notes team, and then
it goes to them. And so the notes
team immediately, just within seconds, just up uploads
it. And so we we pay virtual assistants
to do that.
You can get, like, a third party VA.
So it's it's cheaper to use a third
party VA, everybody.
I think we all know that, but, if
(13:56):
there's somebody out there still paying, like, an
SLP $70 an hour to do that, don't
don't do that. Let SLPs do actual clinical
work, and then you can get, like, a
high school graduate just
to upload. So that's kinda how we do
it. As we become more well known, you
know, like, we just got this Fast Company
award. We're just in the ASHA leader, page
(14:17):
14. Maybe people will start to say, oh,
let's let's let the SLP spot talk to
our system. They're trusted.
That's kinda how everything goes in business. If
they don't trust you,
it's, yeah, you're not gonna get anyone to
to let you, do that through automation. But
that is a frequently asked question that comes
up, and so that's our response as you
can upload it easily into your EMR.
(14:38):
I do think what's cool about this is
most EMRs that have something similar, you have
to use their EMR. So for example, like
simple practice. Let's say that you're you were
using clinical
on-site. I don't know if that's a real
one. But you like the simple practice,
dictation tool.
Well, you would have to pay for the
entire simple practice just to use their dictation
(15:00):
tool. The SLP spy is super cheap, and
it's literally just a tool. So you can
use it with whatever system you're using, and
you're not gonna break the bank.
So it's more like a tool than a
storage system or an EMR, for example. So
Does the tool does the the SLP spot
does it have any sort of,
like, notes, bank, or prompts or anything like
(15:23):
that, or are you just
free speech
in right into it?
Yeah. I can I would love to show
you how it works? I think the best
way is to show you. I'm going to,
take out my, microphone
just because it won't
work,
if I have my microphone plugged in. Can
you still hear me?
(15:44):
Okay. So I know that you said there's,
like, can be an echo if we don't
use a headphone. So I'm just gonna show
you because I think,
the best way for people to understand is
to
to see it. So I'm gonna,
log back in here.
I'm gonna do just because I work with,
(16:05):
kids, I'm gonna do a kid note. So,
I'm gonna speak to you like you're the
mom. So I'm gonna do a set like,
I'm gonna do a note like I'm talking
about my son, and I'm the speech speech
pathologist talking to a parent. Okay? So, Teresa,
you know, you've been coming to speech therapy
with Jackson for
about three months now, and you initially had
(16:26):
concerns that he was not able to produce
his f sound. He was making it like
a p, and it was making it really
hard for people to understand him. And when
he started with us, he was just at
that 0%. He was not even stimulable. And,
you know, that was something that was really
concerning to you, mom.
But now we have known we have noticed
that Jackson actually,
(16:47):
after just three months with us, is able
to produce the the f sound in all
positions of words
for thirty minutes of simple conversation.
So it's actually generalizing
to his everyday conversation.
And and I think you were saying that
now you don't even notice it anymore.
So I feel like this goal has been
met for him.
(17:08):
I would like to continue a few more
sessions just to make sure, but it looks
like he's pretty much ready for for discharge.
And, I know we talked earlier, and you
said that you kind of agree with that
recommendation.
So,
yeah, that's he's done really, really well.
I don't know. You see that was, like,
a minute and nine seconds.
One point zero nine minutes, actually.
And then I hope it sometimes it doesn't
(17:29):
work when I'm on Zoom because the microphone's
being borrowed by Zoom, so we'll see. But
it takes about sixty seconds to generate that
note that note. But you see how that's,
like, a very conversational
summary,
and mainly, we're talking directly to the parents.
So when I'm training my team,
one of the things that we try to
get them away from is saying, the client
presented as a two year old with a,
(17:51):
you know, like a robot.
Okay. So you see this whole note right
here. Do you wanna read this, Teresa?
The so subjective is client's mother, Teresa, shared
her observation about client's progress in speech therapy.
She initial initially had concerns about client's inability
to correctly articulate the f sound, which he
replaced with the p sound. This was causing
comprehension difficulties for others. Client's mother identified that
(18:13):
she that now she does not notice this
issue any longer, suggesting that client's pronunciation has
improved significantly.
She concurred with clinician suggestion that client appears
ready for discharge while also understanding the recommendation
to continue a few more sessions for confirmation
of progress.
Objective,
when client was first presented to this clinic
three months ago, his attempts to produce the
(18:34):
f sound were characterized by complete replacement with
the p sound. At that time, he was
not even simulable for the f sound demonstrating
a 0% proficiency.
Conversely, current observations indicate the client has made
substantial progress in his articulation abilities. He is
now able to produce the f sound correctly
in all word positions during thirty minutes of
simple conversation.
(18:54):
This suggests generalization of the targeted sound to
everyday speech contexts.
Assessment, client has shown significant improvement in articulating
the f f sound, reaching a level of
proficiency where it is consistently used in daily
conversation.
The initial speech goal set for client, correct
articulation
of the f sound has been effectively met.
And then plan, given clients considerable progress, the
(19:15):
plan is to continue a few more therapy
sessions to ensure consistent use of the f
sound. Assuming continued success, the next step will
be discharge from therapy as client appears to
have achieved the initial speech goal.
Well, that's just awesome.
Yeah. And what do you notice about those,
articulation sounds in here? This was particularly hard
to program.
(19:35):
I don't know. They are in the international
Oh, yeah. They are. Yes. They they are
in a in IPA format. Yeah. Because I
I noticed it, but it was just like
it was how it should be. You know?
Right. In your mind, you're like, yeah. That's
how it should be. But do you know
that if we it you know, like, if
you don't program that, like, the other dictation
tools that are just not for SLPs,
(19:55):
they literally will put, like, a capital f
or, like, it just does it'll spell out
p e e, and it just doesn't understand
what we do. So, that was on our
second either iteration.
We fixed articulation notes.
Note that on our on our third iteration,
which is coming out, if you do, like,
these jotted down notes,
the the notes are much more concise.
(20:18):
For our purposes, we've never failed an audit
with a note like this. Like, obviously, if
someone's looking at this, this is a very
comprehensive
note that anybody could understand.
You you don't have to be an SLP
to understand this this note.
But the jotted down notes, some SLPs were
saying they meant they prefer, like, more concise
notes. And so that's kind of our response
(20:39):
to
that user feedback. Yeah. This is awesome, g.
Yeah. Talk a little bit more about because
I think that's what the listeners would love
to hear. You know, most people that listen
to this podcast are medical speech pathologists and
and are bound by Medicare.
And Medicare requires, you know, every day to
write a soap note. So, yeah, do you
guys have the programming
(20:59):
in it for you know, I I just
thinking off the top of my head, I
think, you know, if we say tracheostomy
or any things like that, like, is the
vernacular that we use
programmed in there? It is. And we actually
tested it with, in order to make sure,
we actually test tested it with nurses.
It no. It's not made for nurses, but
(21:19):
we had a a group of nurses. My
mom's a nurse. My my mother-in-law,
She's a nurse, cancer nurse. And so she
actually did a note, where she was talking
about a patient that had cancer, and, they
actually were having a a conversation. So if
the person does talk back to you, just
note that it still is fine.
And it was able to get all of
(21:40):
those medical terms in there because it is
an LLM. So, like I said, a large
language
model, and it is linked up to anything
that is basically known
to,
to to AI. So that's AI basically is
able to,
come up with responses because it looks at
the statistically,
the statistical likelihood
(22:02):
of what comes next.
So it has access. So they've turned basically
language into math. Yep. Right?
Statistically, this word is most likely to be
followed by this in this situation, in this
context. That's how it reasons. So that being
said, yes. It does have access to those
terms, and that's why we tested it with,
like, Mendelsohn
Maneuver and, like, all of those different things.
(22:22):
And we we did test it with 5,000
it was open to 5,000 SLPs. We didn't
quite get all of them in there because
some of them, like I said, didn't make
it past the the little test we had
at the beginning. But we did test it
with SLPs in every setting, And that was
the purpose of that three month free trial
to be able to get feedback to make
sure that it works with SLPs in every
(22:42):
setting. And then we had people from other
settings like, psychologists and psychiatrists
that were reaching out and saying, can we
please, have access to the free trial? And
we kinda have to let them know, well,
we wanna, give the, you know, the SLPs
the first the first chance to do this.
(23:20):
Yeah. So we have differ MelloSpeech, we have
a different system for our,
progress reports. We call them progress reports that
we have to do every six months.
And so,
that system is called our CMS PB five.
It's it's more for,
pediatrics working for birth to five. We've managed
to automate our reports so that it takes
(23:40):
only about
maybe five to seven minutes for us to
write our six month reports. But I suppose
a user could write a full assessment
with the SLP spot. I've I've seen,
some SLPs change it to evaluator. Like, they'll
change their name to evaluator.
And, again, the input affects the output. So
if you speak your entire,
(24:00):
evaluation into the tool, it will generate a
report. It's just that it's gonna it's gonna
say subjective objective assessment plan. But you could
probably just take out those those headings because
you can edit it and submit that as
your note. I mean, it's gonna whatever you
say,
it's going to generate it into, like, nice,
organized
language.
In terms of the uploaded photo one, that's
(24:22):
where you could probably get a better assessment,
like, say that you've written down or even
typed out your whole
kind of assessment and just shorthand.
So, like, I've tried complete shorthand, like, two
y dot o dot
e s t dot rapport,
and it will generate a really nice comprehensive
note. So you could, I mean, try to
(24:43):
modify it and attempt it. I haven't attempted
it with an assessment because it's more for,
like, session daily session notes. Kind of that
really the thing that really bogs us down
is those session notes daily. They have to
be done. If you don't do them, you
might owe a lot of money back, right,
or you might not get paid at all.
They could take I mean, for us, we
could lose our contract if they find that
(25:04):
we're not complying with our IFSPs and IEPs.
You know? Like so it's really important for
us to have a comprehensive
note. And we have submitted these notes for
audit, and we have not. I mean, they're
just so lengthy that
we've just never failed. It's kind of a
trick that I learned, working in schools and,
with highly litigious
school districts. I literally had a lawyer said
(25:26):
say they could tell if the report was
gonna pass par by how thick
it was. Like, it didn't matter how many
pretty words they had. They they said they
could tell by the thickness. People just
assumed that a thicker,
you know, report was was gonna be a
more comprehensive one. So when I do my
IEEs now, Theresa,
those reports are, like, 80 pages long. Yeah.
(25:47):
Talk to me a little bit more about
the HIPAA part of this. I know you
said that for, you know, for HIPAA, you
guys use client and clinician in the notes,
but what about uploading portion,
things like that? Yeah. So you I mean,
you could change it to patient. Just so
you know, it doesn't say client and clinician
every time. You could change it to patient,
SLP,
you know, whatever. You could put anything in
there that you want it to say. And
(26:09):
so up you mean uploading it in terms
of uploading it to your EMR? Yep. Yeah.
So from there, when your note and I
can actually show you this part. When your
note is done,
you have the option to now send it.
So our emails are completely HIPAA compliant.
I'm assuming most people that work in a
hospital system would have HIPAA compliant email systems,
(26:29):
you know, that are gonna be secure because
you're messaging with families.
So you just hit send from there. Mine's
automatically,
you know,
programmed to send to where I want it
to go to. So it's sent already. So
now I've already received that. My notes team
has already received that.
From there, they they take it from there
(26:49):
in terms of of filing it for us.
But if you were like a solo practitioner
working as a maybe a private
practice SLP in a medical setting solo practitioner,
you could just from there save them all
in a file,
print it, copy it, copy and paste it
like this literally,
and then just, you know, hit copy and
(27:10):
then paste it directly in. It takes less
than a second to do that.
Note that you can also edit.
So, like, here you can hit edit. Let's
say you were like, no. I didn't mean
to say that or I wanted to say
the happy boy runs fast.
Right? You see that? I just typed that
in right there. You can just change anything
like that. So and then save changes. But
(27:31):
when you close out this page, it it's
wiped from the system. So that's what I
was talking about with the zero data retention.
Nobody nobody
can access that. We wouldn't be able to
access it on our end.
The AI provider that we use would not
be able to access it because our BAA,
business associate agreement with them, says that they
wipe everything.
There's zero data retention.
(27:53):
So this is a tool. It's not an
EMR system.
That being said,
yeah. It's like similar tools. Like, I don't
know if you've heard of the AAC,
Genie. That's a tool that SLPs use when
they're doing an AAC assessment.
It's a tool. Right? We're not trying to
store all the information in in the AAC
Genie. And I don't know if there's something
like that in in,
(28:14):
medical SLP.
Like, that's just literally a tool that you
just use, but it's not something that you're
gonna store all your client information.
The business associate agreement does go into greater
detail about secure you know, like, what keeps
this secure and whatnot. That's awesome.
Okay. Yeah. Share with me. So how if
people are interested in trying this out. I
know you've been super gracious in extending a
(28:36):
a trial to
swallow your pride listeners.
So when you're going to sign up for
the SLP spot,
which is housed at www.slpeace.com,
for our purposes,
what we did is we gave you a
business identifier.
(28:56):
So this is the same type of code
that you would get if your employer was
paying for a,
account for you.
So you will go ahead and where it
says enter business identifier,
you're gonna enter the code that we give
you here,
and that code is
peace
for
me, exclamation point, peace, and then, like, the
(29:18):
number four, me, exclamation point. Let's have some
peace SLPs because every SLP deserves peace.
The number four, and then me and then
exclamation point all in capital.
And then you'll be able to,
put that in there.
Hit verify.
It'll say it's valid,
and then you'll be able to get in.
See? Selected plan enterprise. You don't have to
(29:40):
choose a plan. You're gonna have to check
off that you agree to these terms of
service, privacy policy, business associate agreement. Obviously, read
that, and then you'll be able to to
get it. And then another thing that some
people have issues with is when sometimes when
they go in here, it sends you a
code. Like, you know, like, that's just standard
practice. It'll send you a a code to
your email. Sometimes people don't get the email
because it goes to spam.
(30:00):
Right? Or maybe their their email, like, thinks
that something blocks it. And so what you
can do to get around that is if
you add SOAP, like SOAP note, soap,@slpeace.com
as a safe email, this is just standard
email practice,
it'll get to you. You could also just
like, a a trick around that is to
send an email to soap@slp's.com
(30:22):
that's not monitored by anybody and just say,
hi.
Right? And then your email just assumes that
it's a it's a known contact because you
sent an email. Okay. Awesome. Thank you for
clarifying that. Anything else you wanna cover? Anything
else you want the people to know? Yeah.
I mean, I don't know. I think one
of the things I would like to talk
about because some people I mean, you and
I, we know the benefits to using technology
(30:44):
in business because it takes away from the
tasks you have to do, and it saves
you time and money. But, I would just
like to say to my SLP friends out
there,
yeah, our rates are constantly
getting cut.
You know? Our services are not valued
the way they should be.
I like to tell regulators,
(31:05):
hey. Just try to go a day
without being able to swallow.
Just go try to go a full day
without and I'm talking don't even swallow your
spit and just see how valuable
that is to you.
That's how we should be paid. But they
don't they don't see it. We're a profession
of mainly females, which also, I think, also
has an impact on our rates. I mean,
(31:27):
just anything back in the history, you can
see that that women in general are are
have been paid less than men. Right? That's
something that we're we're trying to not have
happen anymore, but, unfortunately, it's still happening. The
way we can get around that is to
use technology
to make what we do faster,
so that we're not having to take administrative
tasks home with us, and we can just
(31:47):
focus on what we're really good at, which
is the therapy that we provide
and all that other documentation,
all that other stuff that used to have
me staying super late at my hospital
after my last patient, just typing furiously,
just wishing I could be at home. All
of that is going to go away within
the next few years and faster if you
are fast to accept and adopt a technology.
(32:10):
No. I love it. I love it. I
was reading I can't remember who
one of the big tech geniuses
I wish I could remember who it was
now, but it was something like
health care is not gonna go away. But,
you know, the people that embrace AI in
health care are gonna be that much more
farther ahead than people that are not embracing
it. And so, you know, it's why I'm
(32:31):
super happy to bring you on. You are
an SLP through and through, but, you know,
you also have such a knack for understanding
technology and how SLPs can use it and
how it can benefit us. And, you know,
you've created this awesome program, and I think
this is a really good,
for lack of better term, toe dip into
the AI waters for
some SLPs that you know? And I think
(32:52):
a lot of it too is
scary in that HIPAA sense too. Right? Like,
you don't just wanna go upload,
you know, PHI into chat GPT. Like, please
don't do that. Like Absolutely do not do
that. Do do not do that.
They have said it's not secure. Right. But,
you know, like, it is not secure. So,
(33:12):
yeah, I mean, it is kind of a
scary thing, but for me, like, I've always
been extra.
And so I don't ever take what somebody
tells me at face value. That's why we
made this tool the way we did with
the zero data retention. We made sure that
on both ends, nothing's being saved. And then
on top of that, we de identified it.
Right? Because I know that when I was
a broke SLP in my twenties, I had
(33:34):
a credit card that had $5 on it.
And I had a very nice Mercedes that
I had bought because I was like, I'm
a graduate now. I want a Mercedes. It
was old, but it was a Mercedes.
Someone went and stole my credit card number
from a gas station, and they thought they
would go to Walmart, and they would just
go ahead and get hundreds of dollars of
stuff. Well, let me tell you what happened.
Since I had $5 in there, do you
(33:56):
think they were able to get their stuff?
Nope. Absolutely not. Because you can't steal what's
not there. And so, that's just always been
the way that MelloSpeech looks at us. Hey.
If you don't need to put the whole
client's name in there
Right. Don't do it.
Why why do it? You know, I will
put the client's name into some fancy EMR
(34:16):
where they've got all the billions if they
get hacked.
Because those systems get hacked all the time.
Right?
They do. They get hacked, and they they
get held ransom. Yes. I'm sure you've heard
of this. They they ransom those systems
because they're like, we're gonna keep you out
of your system till you pay us these
millions of dollars. And they do it because
people are gonna die if they don't. Right?
That's a real thing. The best way to
(34:37):
keep something secure is don't put Yep. The
name in there. If you if you wanna
put x x x x and chat g
p t and then replace all the x's,
you know? But,
I still would I just I wouldn't I
wouldn't personally do that. Our systems require
clinical judgment.
K? There it cannot work without clinical judgment.
(34:59):
I gave the the story of my son
who tried to do a note about being
under a table for five hours. Try as
it might, the SLP spot could not turn
that into any kind of
information about speech therapy. It cannot work
without your clinical judgment. Our systems do not
work without your clinical judgment.
Our other system, the CMS p p five,
(35:19):
we had an SLP working with us who
just wasn't thinking and was just clicking, clicking,
clicking, clicking. Well, it shot out complete gibberish.
I I saw the note and I said,
what is this? Did you you you you
put that the child is not speaking? And
then over here, you said that he could
speak in a way that everyone understands him.
These two things cannot coexist.
So which one is it? So we can't
(35:39):
turn off those that clinical hat. You know?
Like, we always have to still think this
is a tool, and I have to read
it over, and I have to go in
and edit it. And now it's my name
on here. So I need to make sure
that what I what I have is is
correct. So, yeah, that's that's for every SLP
thinking AI is gonna replace them. Not quite
yet. Alright. Awesome, g. This is this is
(36:02):
awesome. I I love this so much, and
I I just love your forward thinking with
everything. And yeah. Any anything anything else you'd
like to share? Any final thoughts? I do
have a word of encouragement, and you can
share this with others.
And I know that you've had you've you've
had this happen to you.
When you are a person that thinks outside
of the box and you are someone
that just thinks differently from everyone else who's
(36:23):
going a certain way,
you are gonna have people
that just come up against you
and and just take it upon themselves
to try to stop you from doing what
you're doing. Right? That could be you using
AI tools and everybody else is still handwriting
stuff.
You don't have to share what you're doing
with everybody.
(36:43):
Right? You can just be the fastest
person to get your notes done and go
home directly at 06:00
and and be home while everybody else is
still documenting
without sharing with the whole world. Oh, I
I mean, I I'd love you to share,
but, oh, I'm using the SLP spot, and
that's how I'm getting done faster. Because trust
me, if you do tell them, they will
add more work to you. I was the
(37:05):
first one done because I was just really
fast
with my evaluations with the and the whatnot
with these little ones.
And then my boss saw me just, like,
sitting there having my lunch nicely. And would
you know she added the clients from the
person across the hall to my schedule?
We don't have to tell everybody everything we're
we're we're doing. Right? Alright. Awesome. Well, thanks,
(37:27):
g. This is awesome.
Okay. And we said slpiece.com
is where people can go to check this
out, And then the the code to check
it out is capital
peace, p e a c e, the number
four, me,
and exclamation point, and it's all capitals.
(37:47):
So Yes, ma'am. And I hope people like
it, and it'd be cool if they try
the,
the photo one. That's something we're piloting, so
I'm sure we'll find lots of glitches. But
if you, you know, find them, let us
know. Our Facebook page is the best place
to see those frequently asked questions,
because we just always post them there. It
literally is SLP spot. Excellent. And if people
(38:07):
have any questions or wanna reach out to
you, where can they find you? Yeah. Help.
Literally, help, like, help@slpeace.com.
So help@slp's.com.
It goes to, our tech team and also
our, customer service team, but I do tend
to respond first from my phone wherever I
am. I'm like, oh, it's an SLPs question.
(38:28):
So you'll usually get me responding first. It'll
say sent from my phone, but, it could
also be any member of my team. Thanks,
g. It was so nice chatting with you
again. And that's a wrap for this episode.
As always, thank you so much for listening.
If you'd like to download the show notes
from this episode, please visit swallowyourpridepodcast.com.
There, you can also sign up for our
(38:49):
email list so that you'll never miss another
episode.
If you do like what you hear, then
please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes
or share it on social media with your
friends and colleagues because that is what keeps
these episodes coming.
If you'd like to be a guest, share
feedback, or request a topic to be discussed
on the show, please email podcast@TeresaRichard.com.
(39:11):
Thank you so much for listening, and we'll
catch you next week.
Welcome to the Swallow Your Pride podcast. I'm
your host, Teresa Richard. I'm a board certified
specialist in swallowing and swallowing disorders,
a mobile thieves business owner, and founder of
the MedSLP collective.
This podcast is all about delivering the latest
evidence based practice to medical
SLPs everywhere.
Whether you're a new clinician seeking tangible tools
for treatment or a seasoned vet stuck in
(00:33):
a rut, my goal is to help ditch
the old school ways of the past that
no longer serve you or your patients, to
reinvigorate your passion for our field, to broaden
your knowledge about our scope of practice, and
to inspire you to practice at the top
of your license. So if you're listening, I
encourage you to swallow your pride, be open
and willing to learn because let's face it,
your patients deserve that kind of care. With
(00:54):
that, let's dive right in.
Just a quick disclaimer that all statements and
opinions expressed in this episode do not reflect
on the organizations associated with the speakers and
are their own opinions solely. Alright. Hello, everyone.
Welcome back to the show. Today on the
Swallow Your Pride podcast, we have doctor Jovona
Sandiford.
She is an award winning SLP, tech innovator,
(01:15):
and entrepreneur with nearly two decades of experience.
She is the founder of MelloSpeech,
a tech enabled
mobile speech therapy company launched during the COVID
nineteen pandemic to improve access for infants, toddlers,
and youth with disabilities in underserved communities.
A nationally recognized leader in early intervention and
health tech, doctor Sandiford was recently featured in
(01:36):
Cosmopolitan
c suite series for her work building inclusive,
high impact companies.
Under her leadership, Mello's speech was named one
of Fast Company's twenty twenty five best workplaces
for innovators joining past winners like Canva, Duolingo,
and Moderna.
She was also named a finalist in the
EdTech Awards by EdTech Digest in the leaders
(01:56):
in EdTech trends category.
Among the tools she has developed is the
SLP
spot, a speech therapy support platform that helps
clinicians save time and improve outcomes. Through innovation
and advocacy, doctor Sandeford is transforming how care
is delivered to families who need it most.
Hello, and welcome, my friend.
Hi. Good to be here. Thanks, Theresa. Yes.
(02:18):
Thank you so much for joining us. So
tell the people a little bit more about
yourself. Obviously, you're very, very, very accomplished. I
loved reading that bio, but tell us a
little bit more.
Yeah. I mean, I've been at SLP
over twenty years now.
It was a very rough start
in the field in my CF year,
being that my notes were subpoenaed,
(02:40):
in my clinical fellowship year for a lawsuit,
that a family I I don't believe I'm
able to speak on it. But, yeah, it
was a lawsuit, not concerning me, but my
notes were subpoenaed. So that was my introduction
to,
health care documentation.
And trust and believe that at that time,
we were doing
handwritten stuff looking like this. So that stuff
(03:02):
went up before the whole, you know, the
court and everything. So,
yeah, I've been in SLP a long time,
worked in every basically every part of the
field just trying to find the area where
I love, you know, the most.
Worked at the VA hospital,
with adults, worked at Kaiser and the ENT
department, worked in the schools, did private practice,
did skilled nursing facilities, did medically fragile,
(03:25):
and then finally just settled on on my
company, Mello Speech. We work with, Birth to
Ten, and we really love just using technology
to help more and more little ones in
their home environment. That's where we we serve
clients and virtually.
Awesome. Awesome. So share a little bit more
about this latest venture and how we stumbled
(03:45):
upon this.
Yeah. So, you know, I made my first
app in 2012
to help a family in need. I didn't
find what I was looking for, and, you
know, the iPad was pretty new around that
time. We were just getting into using it
in speech and like, hey. This is better
than carrying around all these boxes of toys.
So I had an early inter introduction
to technology.
(04:06):
And so
my team, the way we were working is
we were doing visits, and then we were
paying for, like, ten minutes of
note time on top of that. So we
would do, like, maybe seven or eight visits
in a day. And so then that would
be, like, eighty minutes seventy to eighty minutes
of note time that we would pay for
on top of that. And, you know, reimbursement
rates are going down for our field right
(04:26):
now. Like, they're they're just they don't go
up. They go down.
And so that was extra that we were
paying. And then some people would give out
notes that said something like showing progress.
Like, we would be going through doing an
audit, and we're like, what what's showing progress?
What did you work on? What how how
are they doing? And that would just literally
fail an audit. There's no way that we
pass an audit. On top of that, some
(04:46):
people were not doing notes at all. But
trust and believe they were getting paid for
that. Right?
Because we paid them no matter what.
And so I spoke with the team, and
we said we've gotta come up with a
way to streamline these notes. And this is
before this was, like, a common thing.
And so what we did is we said,
hey. There's gotta be a way to turn
that visit summary. You know, at the end
of every session, our team is required to
(05:09):
share with the family
how they're doing in the program,
the goals, that they're meeting, the goals going
forward, the home program. They're supposed to do
that. And so we thought, well, it's kinda
redundant for them to share that verbally and
then have to write it down as well,
and then we're not getting all the information.
So our first version of the SLP spot
was called the Mellow Peeps AI no bot.
(05:30):
Not very doesn't doesn't roll off your tongue.
Anyway, so we did that for about six
months, and we're like, hey. This is awesome.
These notes are very comprehensive.
Families are not asking us for copies of
notes anymore because they're literally hearing us talk
our note to them in a conversational way.
It's very secure because the bot doesn't listen
in on the whole session.
(05:50):
That's kinda like the popular tool right now
is, like, the AI bot listens in on
the whole session, and then it comes up
with something that may or may not be
what you meant it to say. But in
our case, whatever we put into the tool
is what it spits out in very nice,
clear language. And so that kind of ended
up saving us about 6 figures pretty quickly.
Right? Just calculate somebody getting paid 50 to
(06:12):
$70 an hour and then eighty eighty minutes,
you know, a a day, for example, because
eight sessions in a day. So it adds
up. And so our bookkeeper was like, wow.
This this tool is saving us money, but,
also, it was saving us time because our
team was not having to go home at
the end of a very, very long day
(06:34):
and say, hey, honey. I now I gotta
do my documentation. Just just give me an
hour to to type up whatever I remember
from the day.
So that was the first iteration of it.
So when we released it,
to our team, we loved it so much.
We went on this TV show I was
just telling you called The Blocks.
One of the judges was listening to some
of our tech, and she said, why don't
you release that to everybody? Because I feel
(06:54):
like everybody can benefit. And we're like, nah.
I mean, it's so easy. People are gonna
come up with something similar so fast. They'll
just, you know, make the same thing. She
said, well, you should still at least give
it a try. So we released the SLP
spot to 5,000
SLPs for free.
We had this great idea, and I was
just talking to Matt Hott. I think you
know him because he used to work together
(07:14):
on a podcast. But I was telling him
we made a a key so that only
SLPs would be able to try it for
free.
It was supposed to be a question that
was super easy for any SLP to answer,
like, what areas do we work with? And
it was something like 30% of SLPs just
failed that initial test and could not get
into the tool.
(07:35):
Oh, wow. They thought it was like a
trick question or or something, but
the ones who got in really helped us
fine tune it and make it something that
is really useful to SLPs today.
And now we have a new and this
is the last part of my long monologue.
But now we have a new portion of
it coming out where if somebody still wants
to do, like, this kinda handwritten
(07:56):
chicken scratch note,
this this will be out before this podcast
comes out, I'm sure, because we're launching it
this weekend.
They take a picture
of that
note. It could be really bad handwriting, and
the tool will generate a beautiful
session note just based on this, and they
can send it to multiple parties right there
instantly, including their own team. So Awesome. That's
(08:18):
the newest, yeah, that's the newest iteration. And
a lot of people that aren't so they
don't feel so comfortable dictating even though they're
talking to the family. They feel kinda odd
speaking into a tool.
This kinda lets them bypass that,
by doing something like that. So, yeah, that's
kinda how it came to, and and, again,
we use tons of tech in MelloSpeech. There's
(08:38):
just tons of it, but that's one of
them. And
we got this the other day for Congratulations.
Thank you. I was not there. Christine Yu,
one of our team in, New York City
picked it up for us. She's one of
our leadership team there, SLP in New York.
So thank you. Awesome. Congratulations.
Yeah. Yeah. Talk to me a little bit
(08:59):
more about,
the tool itself. So it's it's an app,
I'm assuming.
So it is a web based application. And
so what I learned when you click in,
it is really intuitive. My five year old,
when I was working on it, he just
automatically knew to click this microphone and just
start talking.
His note made no sense because it was
about being under a table for five hours
while mommy worked. He had no concept of
(09:21):
time. It was not five hours. It was
ten minutes. So in the settings, you can
change a lot of different things. So let's
say you're an SLP that works in a
school, and maybe you just say student.
We we set this to deidentify
by default.
So,
my theory has always been that, you know,
people can't steal what isn't there.
So if you don't put a client's name
(09:42):
into a note and for some reason this
has gets
somehow
in the encryption,
someone is able to get in, if they
get in and they say and they see
client, that's not PHI. You know what I
mean? So we de identify by default, but
you can also choose not to.
The system is very secure. We use zero
data retention. We have a business associate agreement
(10:03):
with our AI provider,
that also says that they do not save
anything.
And we also encrypt it. But like I
said, can't steal what's not there. So, you
can also choose over here in your clinician
title. We always say clinician, but SLP, SLPA,
therapist, other
other. I've seen some SLPs put evaluator on
here. Like, maybe they're doing an assessment,
(10:25):
and they would rather be called evaluator or
assessor.
And then you can also change the language.
So we provide services in eight languages currently.
Oh my gosh. That's incredible.
So say that your session was in Vietnamese
and you were talking to the to the
family in Vietnamese, but you want your note
to be in English. So maybe you're doing
your session summary in Vietnamese to the family,
(10:46):
but your note is still gonna come out
in English, or you could also change it
to a different language,
custom language. So that's really cool about LLMs
now,
large language is it large language models I
think that stands for?
Because they can access just, like, the entire
universe of languages. So as long as it's
a known language and you train it properly,
you can do that. You can change the
(11:08):
format of the note, and then the best
part for us is where the notes go.
So let's say that you have a family
that every time wants a copy of all
of your notes, Like, there's always that family.
You're like, oh, I gotta go back and
check my note and do all so you
can actually set this to,
send an email per note to the family.
And since it's de identified,
(11:29):
just goes to their email even if their
email isn't necessarily HIPAA compliant. Like, mine is
ours is HIPAA compliant, and it's just gonna
have general information. It's just gonna it puts
what you say into the note in a
nice clear way. So So that's a lot
of people are saying, well, is it gonna
pick up this? Is it gonna pick up
that? It picks up what you say. So
if you don't say it, it's not gonna
(11:50):
know to include some random fact,
but you can edit to include that. So
Does this work with other
electronic medical record systems? Like, does this talk
to them and upload it directly to them?
Yeah. That's a that's a great question. So
when we initially made this product, we we
reached out to a lot of, popular EMRs.
(12:11):
We were ahead of them. They didn't have
it yet. Right?
And what we found
is that they don't know who we are.
Right?
And, we then just gave them the idea,
and they went ahead and and created something
similar, though it's not specific to SLPs. We
found that when they tried to create something,
it just didn't work for us because it
couldn't do articulation notes. It didn't always understand
(12:32):
what we were saying in terms of our
technology, our our technological terms.
And so what we did instead is we
made a way to just,
send it to anyone you want. So for
us, we send it to our notes team.
And we pay just a virtual assistant, sometimes
an intern, just a few bucks to upload
it directly into the EMR.
And so what that looks like is there's
(12:54):
a downloaded file that you can just upload
into that client's chart each time depending on
your EMR. Some people like to copy and
paste it in there, but, we have not
been able to get the API to most
of those EMRs. Yep. That's that's the work
the second part. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
API. So that's like how that some of
them have an open API, and we can
work with those.
But most of them keep their API to
(13:15):
themselves. They don't want it to accept
things from other
sources that aren't, approved sources.
And so, the best way to do that
is either to copy and paste it directly
into your notes or, like we do, we
just upload it. So our team just when
they're done at the end of the day,
or at the end of the session, they
just hit send, and those notes go to
(13:36):
their supervisor, direct supervisor.
It goes to our notes team, and then
it goes to them. And so the notes
team immediately, just within seconds, just up uploads
it. And so we we pay virtual assistants
to do that.
You can get, like, a third party VA.
So it's it's cheaper to use a third
party VA, everybody.
I think we all know that, but, if
(13:56):
there's somebody out there still paying, like, an
SLP $70 an hour to do that, don't
don't do that. Let SLPs do actual clinical
work, and then you can get, like, a
high school graduate just
to upload. So that's kinda how we do
it. As we become more well known, you
know, like, we just got this Fast Company
award. We're just in the ASHA leader, page
(14:17):
14. Maybe people will start to say, oh,
let's let's let the SLP spot talk to
our system. They're trusted.
That's kinda how everything goes in business. If
they don't trust you,
it's, yeah, you're not gonna get anyone to
to let you, do that through automation. But
that is a frequently asked question that comes
up, and so that's our response as you
can upload it easily into your EMR.
(14:38):
I do think what's cool about this is
most EMRs that have something similar, you have
to use their EMR. So for example, like
simple practice. Let's say that you're you were
using clinical
on-site. I don't know if that's a real
one. But you like the simple practice,
dictation tool.
Well, you would have to pay for the
entire simple practice just to use their dictation
(15:00):
tool. The SLP spy is super cheap, and
it's literally just a tool. So you can
use it with whatever system you're using, and
you're not gonna break the bank.
So it's more like a tool than a
storage system or an EMR, for example. So
Does the tool does the the SLP spot
does it have any sort of,
like, notes, bank, or prompts or anything like
(15:23):
that, or are you just
free speech
in right into it?
Yeah. I can I would love to show
you how it works? I think the best
way is to show you. I'm going to,
take out my, microphone
just because it won't
work,
if I have my microphone plugged in. Can
you still hear me?
(15:44):
Okay. So I know that you said there's,
like, can be an echo if we don't
use a headphone. So I'm just gonna show
you because I think,
the best way for people to understand is
to
to see it. So I'm gonna,
log back in here.
I'm gonna do just because I work with,
(16:05):
kids, I'm gonna do a kid note. So,
I'm gonna speak to you like you're the
mom. So I'm gonna do a set like,
I'm gonna do a note like I'm talking
about my son, and I'm the speech speech
pathologist talking to a parent. Okay? So, Teresa,
you know, you've been coming to speech therapy
with Jackson for
about three months now, and you initially had
(16:26):
concerns that he was not able to produce
his f sound. He was making it like
a p, and it was making it really
hard for people to understand him. And when
he started with us, he was just at
that 0%. He was not even stimulable. And,
you know, that was something that was really
concerning to you, mom.
But now we have known we have noticed
that Jackson actually,
(16:47):
after just three months with us, is able
to produce the the f sound in all
positions of words
for thirty minutes of simple conversation.
So it's actually generalizing
to his everyday conversation.
And and I think you were saying that
now you don't even notice it anymore.
So I feel like this goal has been
met for him.
(17:08):
I would like to continue a few more
sessions just to make sure, but it looks
like he's pretty much ready for for discharge.
And, I know we talked earlier, and you
said that you kind of agree with that
recommendation.
So,
yeah, that's he's done really, really well.
I don't know. You see that was, like,
a minute and nine seconds.
One point zero nine minutes, actually.
And then I hope it sometimes it doesn't
(17:29):
work when I'm on Zoom because the microphone's
being borrowed by Zoom, so we'll see. But
it takes about sixty seconds to generate that
note that note. But you see how that's,
like, a very conversational
summary,
and mainly, we're talking directly to the parents.
So when I'm training my team,
one of the things that we try to
get them away from is saying, the client
presented as a two year old with a,
(17:51):
you know, like a robot.
Okay. So you see this whole note right
here. Do you wanna read this, Teresa?
The so subjective is client's mother, Teresa, shared
her observation about client's progress in speech therapy.
She initial initially had concerns about client's inability
to correctly articulate the f sound, which he
replaced with the p sound. This was causing
comprehension difficulties for others. Client's mother identified that
(18:13):
she that now she does not notice this
issue any longer, suggesting that client's pronunciation has
improved significantly.
She concurred with clinician suggestion that client appears
ready for discharge while also understanding the recommendation
to continue a few more sessions for confirmation
of progress.
Objective,
when client was first presented to this clinic
three months ago, his attempts to produce the
(18:34):
f sound were characterized by complete replacement with
the p sound. At that time, he was
not even simulable for the f sound demonstrating
a 0% proficiency.
Conversely, current observations indicate the client has made
substantial progress in his articulation abilities. He is
now able to produce the f sound correctly
in all word positions during thirty minutes of
simple conversation.
(18:54):
This suggests generalization of the targeted sound to
everyday speech contexts.
Assessment, client has shown significant improvement in articulating
the f f sound, reaching a level of
proficiency where it is consistently used in daily
conversation.
The initial speech goal set for client, correct
articulation
of the f sound has been effectively met.
And then plan, given clients considerable progress, the
(19:15):
plan is to continue a few more therapy
sessions to ensure consistent use of the f
sound. Assuming continued success, the next step will
be discharge from therapy as client appears to
have achieved the initial speech goal.
Well, that's just awesome.
Yeah. And what do you notice about those,
articulation sounds in here? This was particularly hard
to program.
(19:35):
I don't know. They are in the international
Oh, yeah. They are. Yes. They they are
in a in IPA format. Yeah. Because I
I noticed it, but it was just like
it was how it should be. You know?
Right. In your mind, you're like, yeah. That's
how it should be. But do you know
that if we it you know, like, if
you don't program that, like, the other dictation
tools that are just not for SLPs,
(19:55):
they literally will put, like, a capital f
or, like, it just does it'll spell out
p e e, and it just doesn't understand
what we do. So, that was on our
second either iteration.
We fixed articulation notes.
Note that on our on our third iteration,
which is coming out, if you do, like,
these jotted down notes,
the the notes are much more concise.
(20:18):
For our purposes, we've never failed an audit
with a note like this. Like, obviously, if
someone's looking at this, this is a very
comprehensive
note that anybody could understand.
You you don't have to be an SLP
to understand this this note.
But the jotted down notes, some SLPs were
saying they meant they prefer, like, more concise
notes. And so that's kind of our response
(20:39):
to
that user feedback. Yeah. This is awesome, g.
Yeah. Talk a little bit more about because
I think that's what the listeners would love
to hear. You know, most people that listen
to this podcast are medical speech pathologists and
and are bound by Medicare.
And Medicare requires, you know, every day to
write a soap note. So, yeah, do you
guys have the programming
(20:59):
in it for you know, I I just
thinking off the top of my head, I
think, you know, if we say tracheostomy
or any things like that, like, is the
vernacular that we use
programmed in there? It is. And we actually
tested it with, in order to make sure,
we actually test tested it with nurses.
It no. It's not made for nurses, but
(21:19):
we had a a group of nurses. My
mom's a nurse. My my mother-in-law,
She's a nurse, cancer nurse. And so she
actually did a note, where she was talking
about a patient that had cancer, and, they
actually were having a a conversation. So if
the person does talk back to you, just
note that it still is fine.
And it was able to get all of
(21:40):
those medical terms in there because it is
an LLM. So, like I said, a large
language
model, and it is linked up to anything
that is basically known
to,
to to AI. So that's AI basically is
able to,
come up with responses because it looks at
the statistically,
the statistical likelihood
(22:02):
of what comes next.
So it has access. So they've turned basically
language into math. Yep. Right?
Statistically, this word is most likely to be
followed by this in this situation, in this
context. That's how it reasons. So that being
said, yes. It does have access to those
terms, and that's why we tested it with,
like, Mendelsohn
Maneuver and, like, all of those different things.
(22:22):
And we we did test it with 5,000
it was open to 5,000 SLPs. We didn't
quite get all of them in there because
some of them, like I said, didn't make
it past the the little test we had
at the beginning. But we did test it
with SLPs in every setting, And that was
the purpose of that three month free trial
to be able to get feedback to make
sure that it works with SLPs in every
(22:42):
setting. And then we had people from other
settings like, psychologists and psychiatrists
that were reaching out and saying, can we
please, have access to the free trial? And
we kinda have to let them know, well,
we wanna, give the, you know, the SLPs
the first the first chance to do this.
(23:20):
Yeah. So we have differ MelloSpeech, we have
a different system for our,
progress reports. We call them progress reports that
we have to do every six months.
And so,
that system is called our CMS PB five.
It's it's more for,
pediatrics working for birth to five. We've managed
to automate our reports so that it takes
(23:40):
only about
maybe five to seven minutes for us to
write our six month reports. But I suppose
a user could write a full assessment
with the SLP spot. I've I've seen,
some SLPs change it to evaluator. Like, they'll
change their name to evaluator.
And, again, the input affects the output. So
if you speak your entire,
(24:00):
evaluation into the tool, it will generate a
report. It's just that it's gonna it's gonna
say subjective objective assessment plan. But you could
probably just take out those those headings because
you can edit it and submit that as
your note. I mean, it's gonna whatever you
say,
it's going to generate it into, like, nice,
organized
language.
In terms of the uploaded photo one, that's
(24:22):
where you could probably get a better assessment,
like, say that you've written down or even
typed out your whole
kind of assessment and just shorthand.
So, like, I've tried complete shorthand, like, two
y dot o dot
e s t dot rapport,
and it will generate a really nice comprehensive
note. So you could, I mean, try to
(24:43):
modify it and attempt it. I haven't attempted
it with an assessment because it's more for,
like, session daily session notes. Kind of that
really the thing that really bogs us down
is those session notes daily. They have to
be done. If you don't do them, you
might owe a lot of money back, right,
or you might not get paid at all.
They could take I mean, for us, we
could lose our contract if they find that
(25:04):
we're not complying with our IFSPs and IEPs.
You know? Like so it's really important for
us to have a comprehensive
note. And we have submitted these notes for
audit, and we have not. I mean, they're
just so lengthy that
we've just never failed. It's kind of a
trick that I learned, working in schools and,
with highly litigious
school districts. I literally had a lawyer said
(25:26):
say they could tell if the report was
gonna pass par by how thick
it was. Like, it didn't matter how many
pretty words they had. They they said they
could tell by the thickness. People just
assumed that a thicker,
you know, report was was gonna be a
more comprehensive one. So when I do my
IEEs now, Theresa,
those reports are, like, 80 pages long. Yeah.
(25:47):
Talk to me a little bit more about
the HIPAA part of this. I know you
said that for, you know, for HIPAA, you
guys use client and clinician in the notes,
but what about uploading portion,
things like that? Yeah. So you I mean,
you could change it to patient. Just so
you know, it doesn't say client and clinician
every time. You could change it to patient,
SLP,
you know, whatever. You could put anything in
there that you want it to say. And
(26:09):
so up you mean uploading it in terms
of uploading it to your EMR? Yep. Yeah.
So from there, when your note and I
can actually show you this part. When your
note is done,
you have the option to now send it.
So our emails are completely HIPAA compliant.
I'm assuming most people that work in a
hospital system would have HIPAA compliant email systems,
(26:29):
you know, that are gonna be secure because
you're messaging with families.
So you just hit send from there. Mine's
automatically,
you know,
programmed to send to where I want it
to go to. So it's sent already. So
now I've already received that. My notes team
has already received that.
From there, they they take it from there
(26:49):
in terms of of filing it for us.
But if you were like a solo practitioner
working as a maybe a private
practice SLP in a medical setting solo practitioner,
you could just from there save them all
in a file,
print it, copy it, copy and paste it
like this literally,
and then just, you know, hit copy and
(27:10):
then paste it directly in. It takes less
than a second to do that.
Note that you can also edit.
So, like, here you can hit edit. Let's
say you were like, no. I didn't mean
to say that or I wanted to say
the happy boy runs fast.
Right? You see that? I just typed that
in right there. You can just change anything
like that. So and then save changes. But
(27:31):
when you close out this page, it it's
wiped from the system. So that's what I
was talking about with the zero data retention.
Nobody nobody
can access that. We wouldn't be able to
access it on our end.
The AI provider that we use would not
be able to access it because our BAA,
business associate agreement with them, says that they
wipe everything.
There's zero data retention.
(27:53):
So this is a tool. It's not an
EMR system.
That being said,
yeah. It's like similar tools. Like, I don't
know if you've heard of the AAC,
Genie. That's a tool that SLPs use when
they're doing an AAC assessment.
It's a tool. Right? We're not trying to
store all the information in in the AAC
Genie. And I don't know if there's something
like that in in,
(28:14):
medical SLP.
Like, that's just literally a tool that you
just use, but it's not something that you're
gonna store all your client information.
The business associate agreement does go into greater
detail about secure you know, like, what keeps
this secure and whatnot. That's awesome.
Okay. Yeah. Share with me. So how if
people are interested in trying this out. I
know you've been super gracious in extending a
(28:36):
a trial to
swallow your pride listeners.
So when you're going to sign up for
the SLP spot,
which is housed at www.slpeace.com,
for our purposes,
what we did is we gave you a
business identifier.
(28:56):
So this is the same type of code
that you would get if your employer was
paying for a,
account for you.
So you will go ahead and where it
says enter business identifier,
you're gonna enter the code that we give
you here,
and that code is
peace
for
me, exclamation point, peace, and then, like, the
(29:18):
number four, me, exclamation point. Let's have some
peace SLPs because every SLP deserves peace.
The number four, and then me and then
exclamation point all in capital.
And then you'll be able to,
put that in there.
Hit verify.
It'll say it's valid,
and then you'll be able to get in.
See? Selected plan enterprise. You don't have to
(29:40):
choose a plan. You're gonna have to check
off that you agree to these terms of
service, privacy policy, business associate agreement. Obviously, read
that, and then you'll be able to to
get it. And then another thing that some
people have issues with is when sometimes when
they go in here, it sends you a
code. Like, you know, like, that's just standard
practice. It'll send you a a code to
your email. Sometimes people don't get the email
because it goes to spam.
(30:00):
Right? Or maybe their their email, like, thinks
that something blocks it. And so what you
can do to get around that is if
you add SOAP, like SOAP note, soap,@slpeace.com
as a safe email, this is just standard
email practice,
it'll get to you. You could also just
like, a a trick around that is to
send an email to soap@slp's.com
(30:22):
that's not monitored by anybody and just say,
hi.
Right? And then your email just assumes that
it's a it's a known contact because you
sent an email. Okay. Awesome. Thank you for
clarifying that. Anything else you wanna cover? Anything
else you want the people to know? Yeah.
I mean, I don't know. I think one
of the things I would like to talk
about because some people I mean, you and
I, we know the benefits to using technology
(30:44):
in business because it takes away from the
tasks you have to do, and it saves
you time and money. But, I would just
like to say to my SLP friends out
there,
yeah, our rates are constantly
getting cut.
You know? Our services are not valued
the way they should be.
I like to tell regulators,
(31:05):
hey. Just try to go a day
without being able to swallow.
Just go try to go a full day
without and I'm talking don't even swallow your
spit and just see how valuable
that is to you.
That's how we should be paid. But they
don't they don't see it. We're a profession
of mainly females, which also, I think, also
has an impact on our rates. I mean,
(31:27):
just anything back in the history, you can
see that that women in general are are
have been paid less than men. Right? That's
something that we're we're trying to not have
happen anymore, but, unfortunately, it's still happening. The
way we can get around that is to
use technology
to make what we do faster,
so that we're not having to take administrative
tasks home with us, and we can just
(31:47):
focus on what we're really good at, which
is the therapy that we provide
and all that other documentation,
all that other stuff that used to have
me staying super late at my hospital
after my last patient, just typing furiously,
just wishing I could be at home. All
of that is going to go away within
the next few years and faster if you
are fast to accept and adopt a technology.
(32:10):
No. I love it. I love it. I
was reading I can't remember who
one of the big tech geniuses
I wish I could remember who it was
now, but it was something like
health care is not gonna go away. But,
you know, the people that embrace AI in
health care are gonna be that much more
farther ahead than people that are not embracing
it. And so, you know, it's why I'm
(32:31):
super happy to bring you on. You are
an SLP through and through, but, you know,
you also have such a knack for understanding
technology and how SLPs can use it and
how it can benefit us. And, you know,
you've created this awesome program, and I think
this is a really good,
for lack of better term, toe dip into
the AI waters for
some SLPs that you know? And I think
(32:52):
a lot of it too is
scary in that HIPAA sense too. Right? Like,
you don't just wanna go upload,
you know, PHI into chat GPT. Like, please
don't do that. Like Absolutely do not do
that. Do do not do that.
They have said it's not secure. Right. But,
you know, like, it is not secure. So,
(33:12):
yeah, I mean, it is kind of a
scary thing, but for me, like, I've always
been extra.
And so I don't ever take what somebody
tells me at face value. That's why we
made this tool the way we did with
the zero data retention. We made sure that
on both ends, nothing's being saved. And then
on top of that, we de identified it.
Right? Because I know that when I was
a broke SLP in my twenties, I had
(33:34):
a credit card that had $5 on it.
And I had a very nice Mercedes that
I had bought because I was like, I'm
a graduate now. I want a Mercedes. It
was old, but it was a Mercedes.
Someone went and stole my credit card number
from a gas station, and they thought they
would go to Walmart, and they would just
go ahead and get hundreds of dollars of
stuff. Well, let me tell you what happened.
Since I had $5 in there, do you
(33:56):
think they were able to get their stuff?
Nope. Absolutely not. Because you can't steal what's
not there. And so, that's just always been
the way that MelloSpeech looks at us. Hey.
If you don't need to put the whole
client's name in there
Right. Don't do it.
Why why do it? You know, I will
put the client's name into some fancy EMR
(34:16):
where they've got all the billions if they
get hacked.
Because those systems get hacked all the time.
Right?
They do. They get hacked, and they they
get held ransom. Yes. I'm sure you've heard
of this. They they ransom those systems
because they're like, we're gonna keep you out
of your system till you pay us these
millions of dollars. And they do it because
people are gonna die if they don't. Right?
That's a real thing. The best way to
(34:37):
keep something secure is don't put Yep. The
name in there. If you if you wanna
put x x x x and chat g
p t and then replace all the x's,
you know? But,
I still would I just I wouldn't I
wouldn't personally do that. Our systems require
clinical judgment.
K? There it cannot work without clinical judgment.
(34:59):
I gave the the story of my son
who tried to do a note about being
under a table for five hours. Try as
it might, the SLP spot could not turn
that into any kind of
information about speech therapy. It cannot work
without your clinical judgment. Our systems do not
work without your clinical judgment.
Our other system, the CMS p p five,
(35:19):
we had an SLP working with us who
just wasn't thinking and was just clicking, clicking,
clicking, clicking. Well, it shot out complete gibberish.
I I saw the note and I said,
what is this? Did you you you you
put that the child is not speaking? And
then over here, you said that he could
speak in a way that everyone understands him.
These two things cannot coexist.
So which one is it? So we can't
(35:39):
turn off those that clinical hat. You know?
Like, we always have to still think this
is a tool, and I have to read
it over, and I have to go in
and edit it. And now it's my name
on here. So I need to make sure
that what I what I have is is
correct. So, yeah, that's that's for every SLP
thinking AI is gonna replace them. Not quite
yet. Alright. Awesome, g. This is this is
(36:02):
awesome. I I love this so much, and
I I just love your forward thinking with
everything. And yeah. Any anything anything else you'd
like to share? Any final thoughts? I do
have a word of encouragement, and you can
share this with others.
And I know that you've had you've you've
had this happen to you.
When you are a person that thinks outside
of the box and you are someone
that just thinks differently from everyone else who's
(36:23):
going a certain way,
you are gonna have people
that just come up against you
and and just take it upon themselves
to try to stop you from doing what
you're doing. Right? That could be you using
AI tools and everybody else is still handwriting
stuff.
You don't have to share what you're doing
with everybody.
(36:43):
Right? You can just be the fastest
person to get your notes done and go
home directly at 06:00
and and be home while everybody else is
still documenting
without sharing with the whole world. Oh, I
I mean, I I'd love you to share,
but, oh, I'm using the SLP spot, and
that's how I'm getting done faster. Because trust
me, if you do tell them, they will
add more work to you. I was the
(37:05):
first one done because I was just really
fast
with my evaluations with the and the whatnot
with these little ones.
And then my boss saw me just, like,
sitting there having my lunch nicely. And would
you know she added the clients from the
person across the hall to my schedule?
We don't have to tell everybody everything we're
we're we're doing. Right? Alright. Awesome. Well, thanks,
(37:27):
g. This is awesome.
Okay. And we said slpiece.com
is where people can go to check this
out, And then the the code to check
it out is capital
peace, p e a c e, the number
four, me,
and exclamation point, and it's all capitals.
(37:47):
So Yes, ma'am. And I hope people like
it, and it'd be cool if they try
the,
the photo one. That's something we're piloting, so
I'm sure we'll find lots of glitches. But
if you, you know, find them, let us
know. Our Facebook page is the best place
to see those frequently asked questions,
because we just always post them there. It
literally is SLP spot. Excellent. And if people
(38:07):
have any questions or wanna reach out to
you, where can they find you? Yeah. Help.
Literally, help, like, help@slpeace.com.
So help@slp's.com.
It goes to, our tech team and also
our, customer service team, but I do tend
to respond first from my phone wherever I
am. I'm like, oh, it's an SLPs question.
(38:28):
So you'll usually get me responding first. It'll
say sent from my phone, but, it could
also be any member of my team. Thanks,
g. It was so nice chatting with you
again. And that's a wrap for this episode.
As always, thank you so much for listening.
If you'd like to download the show notes
from this episode, please visit swallowyourpridepodcast.com.
There, you can also sign up for our
(38:49):
email list so that you'll never miss another
episode.
If you do like what you hear, then
please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes
or share it on social media with your
friends and colleagues because that is what keeps
these episodes coming.
If you'd like to be a guest, share
feedback, or request a topic to be discussed
on the show, please email podcast@TeresaRichard.com.
(39:11):
Thank you so much for listening, and we'll
catch you next week.
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