SLPA Supervision Changes!

GREAT NEWS for the Speech Therapy Businesses and SLPAs! The day has finally arrived! The Florida Board of Speech-Language Pathology & Audiology has approved and implemented the rule change allowing SLPA’s to treat patients without an SLP on site. This is a game-changer for Therapy businesses! And even bigger for therapists who have chosen the SLPA career path but whose schedules and caseloads have always been hindered by this requirement. This rule change goes into effect on Wednesday March 18th, 2020.

There are still supervision requirements for SLPAs and this Rule change in no way reduces the level of supervision required for SLPAs but rather removes the constraint of requiring an on-site SLP during every hour of treatment performed by an SLPA who otherwise meets the supervision criteria and protocols.

So, what does this mean for practices? This rule change brings the supervisory requirements into more alignment with ASHA guidelines and the supervision requirements that exist in most other states. Your SLPA schedules will no longer need to be 100% dictated by the availability of an SLP. As a result, we should see more coverage for patients and more work for SLPAs across the state.

The following rules have been revised:

F.A.C. 64B20-4.003 On-the-Job Training, Role and Observation of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology Assistants

F.A.C. 64B20-4.004 Supervision of Speech-Language Pathology Assistants and Audiology Assistants

F.A.C. 64B20-4.0045 Board Established and Approved Protocols for Speech-Language Pathology Assistants

These revised rules will become effective on 03/18/2020.

Follow this link to see the final versions of these rules.  https://www.flrules.org/gateway/ChapterHome.asp?Chapter=64B20-4  

For more information and questions about this rule change, be sure to reach out to your state organizations including FLASHA and the Alliance for Pediatric Therapies.

Many thanks to FLASHA’s Debbie Campbell and Charlene Westman for walking this Rule through the approval process over the past 2+ years.

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