Owner, Nice Speech Lady LLC

Wilson Nice is a medical speech pathologist, grateful to have benefited from serving in a variety of clinical settings since she began her career in 2000. Nice Speech Lady is a “labor of love” project.

Nice’s work experience includes in-patient, hospital settings, acute rehab, traditional rehab, outpatient and home health opportunities (pediatrics to adults). She has provided speech treatments to patients who experience communication, voice, swallowing and cognitive impairments in skilled nursing facilities in Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico. Nice also served in public school systems a combined seven years in Oklahoma and Texas schools, providing articulation, language, social skills and stuttering speech therapy to all age ranges of students in various inclusion settings, including severe to profound students, to students in a day school for the deaf.

In 2014, she began to serve adults and children in the home health arena — as a employee or independent contractor role and she then returned to her original medical speech pathology roots in SNF settings when COVID-19 began in 2020. Nice currently services as an owner of a hybrid-model outpatient SLP clinic owner in Socorro, NM. She is licensed currently in New Mexico, North Carolina and Oklahoma. See her “for patients” page for her list of payer sources with which she is currently contracted. She is growing the clinic in hiring more speech pathologists at Nice Speech Lady LLC — and desires to continue growing access for patients appropriate for virtual SLP services in more locations of the country.

Her work purpose in being a speech pathologist includes playing an integral part in individuals finding their voice — both figuratively and literally. Nice has had the privilege of serving as a member of rehabilitation teams for individuals who experience a variety of communication needs (including no-tech to high-tech augmentative/assistive communication, language, social skills voice and articulation), with individuals who are medically-fragile, and with individuals who have acute or chronic swallowing symptoms. Nice continues to make a concerted effort to establish supportive relationships with all persons involved in the care of those she serves. With all patients who require speech pathology services that she has had the privilege to work with, she intentionally seeks out functional gains — big and small — that make a difference in the day-to-day functional needs of their lives.

Personal enrichment: Nice also understands that speech pathologists themselves face unique challenges in this puzzle called life. As she has experienced her own unique health and personal challenges in her life before after becoming a speech pathologist, Nice encourages all speech pathologists to daily practice self-care, and seek out professional services and recovery support groups to continue with personal growth, if indicated. Seeking out healing herself has allowed Nice the capacity to be for others — what she needed herself. In addition, personal faith provides her the strength to face each day with thankfulness.

Nice is a grateful mother to three adult sons — Daniel, Jason and Seon, and is a new-“Gramz” to Charlotte, who arrived in 2023. Nice and her husband, who she calls her “rock,” enjoy their blended family, established in 2005, and Nice and her husband live in Socorro, NM. In late March of 2023, Nice also enjoyed the upgrade to her relationship status to “Gramz,” due to the birth of her beautiful grand-daughter: Charlotte.

Nice is thankful for her support network, and faces each day with resolve to make lemonade out of the lemons that have come her family’s way. Nice is constantly amazed at the character of each of her sons, as each son is unique, valuable and special — and have much to contribute to the world. Nice is also thankful for her host of family members, close friends and her providers.


Vision: “Opening doors for unparalleled SLP access.” 

Mission Statement — “To further the field of speech pathology through:

  • providing original resources,
  • delivering hybrid OP speech services,
  • and providing companies which serve SLPs t— o utilize innovative communication avenues to reach new customers.

Values:
“—openness and creativity
— compassion and self-care
— validation and respect
— evidence and encouragement
— balance and excellence
— fiscally responsibility and organization
— effectiveness and growth“

With all of the above in mind, Nice’s contribution to the profession is to provide innovative, creative and ready-made solutions/materials in a web-based platform to SLPs and related providers — in addition to operating the outpatient speech pathology hybrid clinic. Nice’s undergraduate degrees are from Oklahoma State University in Communication Sciences & Disorders, as well as Journalism. She also benefitted from receiving her master’s degree in Communication Sciences & Disorders from OSU, in 2000. Nice Speech Lady resources on the site, available free of charge to speech pathologists, assist in “adding to the toolbox” that speech pathologists utilize daily. (Disclosure: Before April of 2022, Nice’s formal legal name was “Bekah Wilson Nice.”) Nice was listed as a clinician on the “Best in Patient Care” list for 2018, as well as being named one of the “Top 100 SLPs Impacting the Field” by Chicago Speech Therapy in 2019. Nice was an ASHA ACE Award Recipient for 2020 and 2021.

 

Nice’s input to the field can also be found elsewhere at the following links:

 

Facts About Nice Speech Lady LLC

• The company began with home health contract roots in December of 2016, on a part-time basis.

• In February of 2018, the company’s mission shifted to an education/resource focus — and https://nicespeechlady.com was launched, with intent to provide practical and evidence-based complimentary handouts, testing guides, sessions materials, blog posts and other information to medical speech pathologists, available free of charge. On a regular basis since 2018, new copy-written resources, news articles, industry-leader Youtube interviews or other materials that speech pathologists could use immediately — have been published and have been used world-wide.

• In August of 2022, Nice Speech Lady initiating the credentialing process for Medicaid and Medicare in New Mexico.

• January of 2023, a part-time tele-practice presence began for areas of New Mexico that have limited access to services for speech pathology, for patients who qualified. Patients were seen on a part-time basis from the owner’s home, during off-hours.

• Late July of 2022, the physical location that allowed hybrid access (in-person or virtual) was opened, due to local requests for in-person services, and Nice Speech Lady LLC  transitioned from a part-time business to a full-time endeavor for Wilson Nice, MA., CCC-SLP, with contracting no longer being part of the business plan. More credentialing applications began for additional payer sources.

• Late January 2023, Nice Speech Lady launched a new electronic medical records system that was additionally robust — to meet the unique billing and support needs of the practice.

• Late February of 2023, the clinic reached capacity and new referrals unfortunately started being placed on a waiting list, however — attempts have been continuing to expand to meet the demand of patients that request local or virtual services.

• March of 2023, Angela McMillan, M.A., CCC-SLP joined the Nice Speech Lady LLC team to serve patients on Fridays, given the high demand from patients’ families whose children do not have Friday school days, and the families asked for Friday appointments.

• There are ongoing plans to seek out other SLPs who could join the team to serve the community as efficiently and effectively as possible, with compassion and with a patient/family-goal approach. A possible new locations may be in the works to allow for multiple in-person visits to occur simultaneously — to meet the demand of the community.

• The portal to the clinic is currently housed at https://nicespeechlady.com/for-patients/. As well, payer information and services are listed. Resources at the website continue to be available and more resources are planned.

• Plans to expand for virtual access in other states are also ongoing, with tele-practice being an effective option for many patients who live in rural areas — or have other factors that make virtual access desirable for short-term or longer stents of SLP services.