How often do you use social networking to promote your clinic or network with wound care peers?

Active Fluid Management®

Today’s Wound Clinic interviewed Geoff Haas, Senior Business Development Manager, Milliken Healthcare Products, LLC to discuss their technology, Active Fluid Management®.

Today’s Wound Clinic (TWC): Please list the full name of your technology?
Geoff Haas (GH): Active Fluid Management® is the full name of the technology, but it is commonly abbreviated as “AFM®”. The AFM abbreviation is used on all products, which incorporate this unique fluid management technology.

TWC: What year was your technology created?
GH: The technology was commercialized by Milliken Healthcare Products as SelectSilver® wound care dressings in 2007. Since that time, AFM technology has been employed in a variety of skin, wound, and burn care products. For instance, AFM Ag ASSIST dressings were launched in May of 2011 and AFM Ultra Ag Foam dressings were launched in October 2011.

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Measuring Quality In Wound Care

  It is estimated that 2% of the US population has a chronic wound and a conservative estimation of the cost of caring for these wounds exceeds $50 billion dollars per year. The current reimbursement model of outpatient care has continued to reward both physicians and hospitals for performing high cost, advanced therapeutics without a feedback mechanism for quality. Although the debate regarding how to measure “quality of care” may seem recent, these ideas actually date back to the early 1900s with the work of Dr. Ernest Codman. He developed the Minimum Standard for Hospitals to help eliminate substandard care. The Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA, renamed the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) first attempted to measure and publicly report hospital outcomes in 1986 but it withdrew its “mortality measures” because of widespread criticism. In 1999, The Joint Commission (TJC) began to develop a set of core measures for hospitals. The core measures were formally adopted by an act of Congress in 2003 as the basis for a reimbursement incentive for voluntary performance reporting among hospitals. In the century since Codman’s initial work, debate has continued to rage regarding exactly what represents a measure of “quality” for healthcare providers. It was for this purpose that The National Quality Forum (NQF) was created.

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Is your wound care clinic ready for the switch to ICD-10?

From The Mouths of the DME Companies

Today’s Wound Clinic interviewed representative from several leading DME Companies to explore how their business help in the wound care clinic space.

The following companies participated in this interview:

National Rehab

Location: U.S. Corporate Office: Airside Business Park, 540 Lindbergh Dr. Moon Township, PA 15108
Website: www.nationalrehab.com
Interviewee name and title: Cheryl L Hutton, BSN, RN, CWON Clinical Director

1) What a clinician needs to know about using a DME company?

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Debridement Agents and Devices

Healthpoint Biotherapeutics

WEBSITE: www.healthpoint.com, www.santyl.com
CONTACT: (800) 441-8227
LOCATION: Fort Worth, Texas
FOUNDED: 1992

Product Line: Collagenase SANTYL® Ointment

Description: Collagenase SANTYL® Ointment is the only FDA approved biologic enzymatic debriding agent, and provides continuous, active micro-debridement of necrotic tissue in dermal ulcers (pressure, venous, arterial and diabetic) and severely burned areas, thus allowing granulation tissue to form and epithelialization to occur. SANTYL® Ointment is a biologic treatment that is appropriate for both initial debridement, as well as maintenance debridement of necrotic tissue.

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An Inside Look at Organogenesis

Today’s Wound Clinic interviewed Geoff MacKay, President and Chief Executive Officer at Organogenesis.

Today’s Wound Clinic (TWC): How long have you personally been in wound care and how did you enter this area of healthcare?
Geoff MacKay (GM): I’ve been focused on the developing fields of regenerative medicine, and advanced wound care, for about 15 years. After starting in pharma, I left that world and took a chance on regenerative medicine. I was part of the team at Novartis that handled Apligraf® when Novartis was partnering with Organogenesis in the 1990s. When Novartis decided to go in a different direction and get out of the regenerative medicine field, a team of people from Novartis (including myself) saw the potential in regenerative medicine and decided to join and build Organogenesis.

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Dressed for Success: What Clinicians Need to Know about Ordering Wound Dressings

  Over the years we have seen many sad illustrations of what happens when patients don’t have proper wound dressings. We have all seen patients arrive with dressings made from paper towels, cleaning rags, saran wrap or underwear. Sadly, in some cases, the problem was not that patients lacked insurance coverage for dressing supplies, but that no caregiver had told them of this benefit. Patients followed for months by clinicians who ought to have known better (eg, excellent surgeons) are stunned and then angry when they discover that they have needlessly paid large sums of money “out of pocket” for dressings. Patients can lose faith in the clinical skills of a practitioner who is uninformed about issues like dressing coverage policy! So, the first thing clinicians need to know is that most patients who have medical insurance have some sort of DME coverage for dressings.

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An Inside Look at Medela Healthcare

Today’s Wound Clinic interviewed Susan Reid, MSN, MBA, RN, WOCN, CWCN, Director of Clinical Affairs – Medela Healthcare to learn about the company’s goals and mission.

Today’s Wound Clinic (TWC): How long have you personally been in wound care and how did you enter this area of healthcare?

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An Inside Look at Spiracur Inc.

Today’s Wound Clinic interviewed Dane Shackleford, Vice President, Sales at Spiracur Inc to discuss the SNaP® Wound Care System.

Today’s Wound Clinic (TWC): How long have you personally been in wound care and how did you enter this area of healthcare?

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