Post acute providers - hospices, home health agencies, skilled nursing facilities, and long term acute care hospitals are often reticent to admit new patients with complex or chronic wounds. Wound care patients are both labor intensive and costly and often times these patients are at end of life.
Conversely, there is a great opportunity for post-acute providers to establish themselves as wound care centers of excellence. Mastering the craft of successful wound care can result in increased referrals and provide a means to partner with physicians, hospitals, and payers in value-based care models.
So, what are the components of a successful wound management program and the associated metrics. These can be broken down into three basic elements:
Quality of Care
Are you delivering evidence based, best practice wound care?
Do you have wound specific treatments that are based on the latest recommended treatments as detailed in peer reviewed wound journals ?
Do you review and update these treatments on a regular basis?
Do you audit your clinician’s documentation to ensure that they are following these treatment plans?
Are your wound-related Medicare scores 3 or above?
Metrics:
Wound healing times to closure
Reduced number of wound-related ED visits and hospital readmissions
Reduced number of provider-acquired pressure ulcers
Wound-related CMS star rating measures
Cost of Care
Are you achieving a margin on wound patients?
Are you actively marketing your wound care program?
Metrics:
Average number of wound-related nursing encounters/visits
Average wound supply cost/patient
Regulatory and Compliance
Have your accreditation and regulatory surveys been deficiency free on wound-related items?
Have payers - Medicare, Medicaid, commercial insurers, etc. - been scrutinizing and/or withholding payments for wound patients due to medical necessity?
Metrics:
# of wound-related survey deficiencies
# of wound-related payment denials
Listen to our podcast to learn more about Corstrata. Our board certified clinicians recommend the most up to date wound treatments, efficacious wound supplies, and monitor documentation for regulatory compliance. Corstrata’s software drives consistency and standardization of wound documentation that helps healthcare providers decrease their liability as well as meet regulatory and compliance standards. To learn more about wound care management solutions, visit our website and schedule your demo today.