Parkinson Voice Project

History

In 1998, Medicare reduced reimbursement rates for rehabilitation services. As a result, services at many outpatient hospital clinics were reduced. Because she felt her Parkinson's patients could no longer receive adequate, affordable care, Samantha Elandary resigned from her position at a Dallas hospital in search of alternatives. Her patients needed both individual treatment with ongoing support to improve their speech and swallowing.

Specialties

Parkinson Voice Project provides voice treatment to people with Parkinson disease and related neurological disorders. Patients are scheduled for a combination of individual and group sessions. With intensive voice sessions and daily practice, patients have reported improvements in breath support for speech, vocal volume, articulation, vocal quality, prosody of speech, a reduction in drooling, and an improvement in swallowing. All treatment is provided by master's-level speech-language pathologists who are certified by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.