Importance Of Outpatient Wound Care Centers

Outpatient wound care centers are great. They are phenomenal. They have been around for quite some time. We have seen the whole roller coaster of centers profiting and then some closing and everybody wants to find that magic recipe.

What is that recipe? How are we fruitful? How are we benefiting the patient and getting people healed and also turning a profit because, let's face it. We're in a situation where we see the sick patients.

We have to make sure we have insurance coverage. We have to make sure we have verifications, we have all these different products that we're using. We've got skin grafts and skin substitutes and hyperbaric oxygen. We need to make sure we're doing our due diligence and making sure that we have all these different types of services on board.

They benefit the patient not only physically, and don't hurt them financially, but also help the center as well with their numbers and their data and their margins. What we're seeing is, we know that the multidisciplinary approach is the way to go.

We know that we need all different types of services on board and we need them readily available. If you're in your office and you need to refer a patient to the wound care center, or you need to refer them to the hospital, that's where that model comes into play where we can have everybody under the same umbrella and getting the patient the services they need in a timely fashion.

In a hospital based wound care center and outpatient setting, you'll typically have a Monday through Friday situation with providers going into the wound care center or being consulted into the wound care center. You'll have an area of the hospital where you have your radiology department and your X-rays.

The patient can get laboratory blood work. The patient can get a consultation through infectious diseases or vascular or podiatry, what have you. That is typically the situation we see in the hospital outpatient wound care setting, and you get everything under that umbrella.

The difference between that and a freestanding wound care center in the community would be that that person or that company would have to provide those services, or they would have to coordinate those services with the hospital nearby.

Those are things that regulatory things come into effect. Where am I going to put my HBO? Am I allowed to put my HBO in a free standing clinic? What is the reimbursement for different services, different types of debridement, different laboratory blood work? How does that get coordinated into the plan of care?

If you're in the community and you have your office and say you're a podiatrist or a primary care doctor and you're not necessarily a part of the hospital based wound care center but would like to be involved, I would recommend reaching out to the wound care center.

Seeing if there is any availability on the panel. If there is, great. Look into that. If there isn't, then I would coordinate the plan of care with your patients with the hospital and the wound care center to make sure that the continuity of care is there and you're able to bring the patients to the wound care center when they need that. Then you'll develop a referral based relationship and that can help everybody.