Wound care services are transforming rapidly hence wound clinics are looking for varied business and wound management strategies that enable them to offer the best care to patients. Also, these new wound management strategies can make these clinics competitive in the market.
Generally, chronic wounds are considered as wounds that fail to show any tendency to heal after three months of treatment. Billions of Dollars costs wound care each year and is expected to increase along with the aging population.
Due to technological advancement clinicians are witnessing an exponential increase in the wound care products which resulted in the selection of treatments confusing.
Impact of COVID-19 on Wound care
Today, COVID-19 has changed the way wound clinics operate as wound care clinics are not restricted to site-specific locations. This pandemic seriously impacted the health care system in the United States. Surgeons recommended delaying or canceling non-essential medical and surgical services to reduce the exposure risk of the virus.
Due to this, wound centers were uniquely impacted as wound centers are located in the physical space of the hospital and hospitals closed wound centers to decrease the risk of transmission among hospital outpatients.
However, the future of wound care seems far different than what it is today. There are several factors to boost these changes such as the nature of consolidated insurances, payers, and coverage policies. Moreover, wound clinics must be adaptable and they need to change the way of business conduct.
New Wound Care model
The traditional model of a fee-for-service wound center will be replaced by bundled payments and Diagnosis-Related Group/Ambulatory Payment Classification (DRG/APC) based revenue streams. The traditional model
This model will challenge the wound center management as well as physician staff to focus more on episodic care mechanisms and rely less on the Relative Value Unit (RVU) procedural medicine. Due to episode-based payment will be enforced shortly, there is a high possibility of that both the physician and the hospital will end up partnering in some sort of bundled payment approach. Now, Lets’ look at building blocks for successful wound care clinics in the future.
An integrated and collaborative approach to care
Generally, patients with wounds have complex medical histories and require various specialists to address the underlying issues affecting and impacting the potential for wound resolution. To end this wound care clinics need to have a more integrated and collaborative approach to care in which hospital management will look for a one-stop-shop model. This model will reduce cost and time to manage these individuals.
Wound care providers will need well-trained staff for wound management techniques and each provider will be board-certified in wound management rather than just board-certified in their primary specialty. Also; the provider will need to know APC/RVU generated and become more business-oriented regarding cost needs of the treatment plan for each patient
The majority of wound patients have edema and all edema as lymphedema having the potential to result in chronic inflammation and deleterious soft tissue changes. Moreover, the majority of lower extremity lymphedema patients have skin impairment hence they need expert Practitioners who understand the interplay of the lymphatic and integumentary systems. Hence wound care clinics will need a certified lymphedema therapist on their staff.
Wound Care Management
Wound management is the implementation of both direct and indirect methods, together with the prevention of skin breakdown for the treatment of a wound by providing an appropriate environment for healing. However, providers will need to perform better-advanced wound care management includes wound care as well as the importance of wound management.
The providers should be considered wound as various wound care concepts such as debridement, compression, offloading, and CTP. Moreover, the provider will need to create a full treatment plan from week 1 to week 4 to week 12 for each patient.
This will more dependent on the need to manage the cost of the wound center and less on the revenue of the wound center. Hence as wound care practitioners, you need to be ready and adaptable for the inevitable changes.
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