From the Editor: Coming Home

  As I begin this editorial I feel like I am sort of “coming home,” as I have been on a sabbatical since last fall as my husband became more ill and ultimately lost his courageous battle with cancer in January. I was truly humbled and touched by the outpouring of love and support that I received from our wound community “family,” and words cannot express my thanks. A special thank you to Jim Calder, Caroline Fife, and Kathy Schaum for relieving me of all responsibility allowing me the special time that I needed.

  With that said, even though I am writing this month’s editorial, I was not actively involved in the development of this issue, which allows me to view it as you all do as readers, and I am so excited and proud of the information packed into this issue. As is always the goal with Today’s Wound Clinic—to cover topics important to the successful management of a clinic are addressed—and the topics in this issue are no exception. I just celebrated my 10th year in a leadership role in outpatient wound care, and it never ceases to amaze me the degree of increasing difficulty we encounter year after year to run the business and more importantly, provide the level of care we are dedicated to providing for our patients. To that end, the articles in this issue focus on keeping abreast of what we need to do to continue to do the right thing.

  The feature articles this month help us to look at all of the information needed for so many patients just to get them into the door for the first time. With the increasing number of managed care plans that fortunately (or unfortunately) may be national, regional, or even now local, navigating the required documents, codes and prior authorizations required is a daunting and time-consuming task. And that is just to get the first visit! Kathleen Schaum’s Business Briefs article again provides us with treasured information related to the latest in coding and reimbursement pertinent to the procedures that we do and the care that we are providing. The patient then arrives with one authorized visit, and the often weekly task of sending clinical notes and authorization requests begins. In my 10-year journey, I have worked with our singularly amazing “front office Goddess,” Diana Toro, who continues to pull off this role. And our staff—like many in our field—so often just digs in our heels and refuses give in to the amount of work ahead of us. However, this takes an extraordinary amount of administrative time.

  To that end, it may become increasingly difficult to “share the revenue” with the beloved management company that made the clinic successful in the first place, and Dr. Tom Serena addresses this in his article proposing a possible solution to transitioning away to running on your own. And there is really no possible way to manage all of the regulatory and administrative needs of accomplishing all of the above without an electronic data collection or medical record to provide the tools to accomplish those tasks. Our Product Roundup in this issue focuses on just these types of systems to make that a reality.

  Wow, what an issue! Enjoy, use and incorporate this valuable information into your day-to-day practices and management strategies. And for the ultimate in clinical information, we will look forward to seeing you all in Dallas, Texas for the spring meeting of the Symposium on Advanced Wound Care, the largest and most comprehensive wound meeting of the year, as well as the annual meeting of the Wound Healing Society and the Association for the Advancement of Wound Care. We have a terrific assortment of presentations, posters, and exhibits which will meet the needs of all wound clinicians at all levels and experience of practice, and provide an amazing networking opportunity for you all.

Dot Weir, RN, CWON, CWS, Co-Editor of TWC, Dorothy.Weir@HCAhealthcare.com