Help resolving wounds across all care settings

Summary: Success resolving wounds in long term care drove program development to serve individuals, a variety of clinicians and clinical settings, as well as payors interested in resolution of chronic wounds.

In October of 2005, one of Minnesota’s largest long term care facilities began rapid implementation of a “wound best practices” program. Through implementation of that wound care program, that facility and other innovative leaders in long term care have mainly eliminated the need for the skilled day authorizations that result from wound related complications.  Those facilities that implemented the program have also significantly reduced referrals for residents with high acuity wounds to out-patient wound clinics or to hospitals for in-patient stays.

The centerpiece of the wound care program those facilities implemented was staff education that focused on the timely use of several new wound healing and prevention technologies: pulsed electromagnetic field therapy or PEMF, AgX Solution to reduce the bio-burden and microbial bacteria present in most wounds, as well as an electronic reporting system to capture and report wound status over time. The goal of the program was to improve all wound outcomes regardless of wound type, duration, stage or origin.

In the process, those long term care facilities began sharing their outcomes data withother interested facilities across Minnesota. Since then, more than 10 multi-facility organizations and more than 50 facilities in nearly 10 states have adopted this same wound care program. The program has achieved like results in over 1,900 wound cases across all the participating facilities. All of the wound outcomes data is currently collected on a HIPAA compliant electronic data recording and reporting system that was developed in the summer of 2007 to help tell the success story and allow for ease of program deployment and accountability.

Among the outcomes driven by participating long term care facilities is a significant reduction across all categories of wound costs. The majority of participating facilities have documented measurable decreases in costs of wound care. One facility for example, in just the dressings cost category, reported a 50% reduction from $78,000 to $39,000 in the first year.

Of course success at the facility level has driven program development for individuals with wounds and with clinical settings beyond the long term care setting. Advanced Healing Systems now has programs for individuals with wounds, wound clinics, hospitals, home health agencies, and insurers.

Whether you are an individual with a chronic non-healing wound, an integrated health system that understands the need to improve clinical outcomes while reducing costs, or a health system payor with an interest in partnering to improve the outcomes for your covered population, the AHS Wound Care Formulary can demonstrate how a consistent program leveraging new technologies can significantly improve wound care outcomes both clinically and financially.