New Products and Industry News

Next Science and 3M Donate $300,000 of Breakthrough Wound Treatment to 

Jacksonville-Area Charity

New BlastX donation reaffirms the company’s commitment to health care nonprofits and their patients with chronic wounds

Next Science, an innovative medical technology company that is the leader in treating biofilm-based infections in humans, has donated $300,000 worth of BlastX Antimicrobial Wound Gel to The Save A Leg, Save A Life Foundation in Ponte Vedra, FL. The donation will support the foundation’s mission of reducing lower extremity amputations and improving wound healing outcomes through evidence-based methodology and community outreach.

“We are determined to reduce lower leg amputations, leveraging all relationships and resources to make this happen,” said The Save A Leg, Save A Life Foundation Executive Director Dr. Desmond Bell. “It takes a team approach to fulfill our mission and we are thankful to Next Science for this donation and for the health care practitioners providing superior wound treatment care to our communities’ most vulnerable populations.”

This gift is part of a $600,000 donation program with 3M Company, the exclusive distributor of BlastX. 

“Next Science is dedicated to helping patients and saving lives with our ground-breaking technology to treat chronic wounds,” said Dustin Haines, chief commercial officer for Next Science. “We are proud to partner with The Save A Leg, Save A Life Foundation and help them provide patients with the superior care they need to enjoy a better quality of life.” 

The support to The Save A Leg, Save A Life Foundation is the second donation of BlastX that Next Science and 3M have made to organizations that are treating patients with chronic wounds. On November 10, 2020, the company donated $300,000 worth of BlastX Antimicrobial Wound Gel to Hampton Ridge Healthcare and Rehabilitation, one of New Jersey’s premier centers for skilled nursing and rehabilitative care, which  is located in Toms River. Next Science also set up donation programs to help patients who were unable to receive treatment at wound care clinics that were closed because of COVID-19. 

BlastX is a breakthrough antimicrobial wound gel that is powered by Next Science’s patented, nontoxic, biofilm-disruption Xbio technology. BlastX breaks down biofilm, destroys bacteria within the gel and defends against reinfection.

Biofilm, which is a naturally occurring substance, accounts for a significant percentage of hard-to-manage bacterial proliferations worldwide. 

ABOUT NEXT SCIENCE

Next Science is a medical technology company headquartered in Sydney, Australia, with a research and development center based in Jacksonville, FL. Established in 2012, the company’s primary focus is on the development and continued commercialization of its proprietary Xbio technology to reduce the impact of biofilm-based infections in human health. Xbio is a unique, nontoxic technology with proven efficacy in eradicating both biofilm-based and free-floating bacteria. Next Science owns 100% of the patent-protected intellectual property relating to its Xbio technology. For further information visit www.nextscience.com.

ABOUT SAVE A LEG, SAVE A LIFE FOUNDATION

The Save A Leg, Save A Life Foundation was founded in 2015 to address issues pertaining to the ever-increasing population of people with diabetes, including nonhealing wounds, peripheral arterial disease, and lower extremity amputation. Education, philanthropy, and patient advocacy are the principles the Foundation has been built upon to achieve its mission. For further information visit thesalsal.org.

ABOUT 3M

At 3M, we apply science in collaborative ways that improve lives daily. With $32 billion in sales, our 96,000 employees connect with customers all around the world. Learn more about 3M’s creative solutions to the world’s problems at https://www.3m.com/ or on Twitter @3M or @3MNews.

Wound Care Plus, LLC Adopts the MolecuLight i:X as a Standard Point-of-Care Device for Its Wound Care Service Offering to the Long-Term Care and Extended Care Markets

MolecuLight i:X will provide essential real-time information to assist Wound Care Plus’s advanced wound care consultants in providing the highest-quality care

MolecuLight Inc., the leader in point-of-care fluorescence imaging for real-time detection of wounds containing bacteria, announced that Wound Care Plus, LLC, the largest mobile wound care provider in the US Midwest, has adopted the MolecuLight i:X point-of-care imaging device to be included as part of its standard of care services offered to the long-term care and extended care markets. 

Long-term care facilities have a disproportionately high rate of wounds and related infections¹ compared with the general population. Skin and soft tissue infections are the third most common infection found in this care setting, with a high incidence rate of up to 2.1 cases/1000 resident days.² Often, infections develop in these wounds due to delayed detection of high bacterial loads coupled with an immunocompromised population, suppressing signs and symptoms of infection. Improving the detection of clinically significant levels of bacteria may limit the development of invasive or systemic infection in this vulnerable patient population. 

“After a rigorous evaluation of our technology, we are thrilled to announce that Wound Care Plus, LLC has adopted the MolecuLight i:X as a standard-of-care to support their clients in long-term care and extended care facilities across 14 states,” said Anil Amlani, MolecuLight’s CEO. “This is yet another example of how the MolecuLight i:X device is complementing the clinical decision-making of wound care professionals – and ultimately helping to improve clinical outcomes within long-term care and extended care facilities.”

 “Access to quality wound care is imperative in the long-term care and extended care setting,” says Martha R. Kelso RN, LNC, HBOT, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Wound Care Plus, LLC. “We are often called into long-term care and extended care facilities to treat chronic nonhealing wounds on clients with multiple major comorbidities and polypharmacy. This is usually after multiple failed courses of standard-of-care treatment. Our most vulnerable clients deserve the best care and resources we can offer. Having better diagnostic tools and advanced procedures improves our success in healing wounds, and reduces the need for amputations or premature end of life scenarios. Detecting bacterial presence while at the client bedside using the MolecuLight i:X has transformed how we care for our clients’ wounds. There is no guesswork, and no waiting on cultures to detect bacterial burden in the wound. The information we obtain on wound fluorescence has led to treatment plan changes in over 80% of wounds assessed. We often use sharp debridement to remove the bacteria and nonviable tissue, without reaching for antibiotics. Imaging with the MolecuLight i:X provides immediate information that helps us know if the bacteria was effectively removed or if additional treatment is needed.”

The MolecuLight i:X will become a standard point-of-care tool to be used by Wound Care Plus’s Advanced Wound Consultants across all of its operations in Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas, and Wisconsin, and will provide real-time insights on hundreds of thousands of clients’ wounds in long-term care and extended care facilities. 

“When we are able to eliminate antibiotics, we prevent unnecessary debilitating side effects from harming our vulnerable clients due to these medications and stop contributing to the multi-drug resistant organism that is rampant in health care. By adopting the MolecuLight i:X point-of-care imaging device for our aging and aged populations living with a chronic wound, it is a major accomplishment that will assist in the pathway to wound resolution,” affirmed Kelso.

The MolecuLight i:X imaging procedure has a reimbursement pathway that includes 2 CPT* codes applicable in the long-term care and extended care setting for physician work to perform “fluorescence wound imaging for bacterial presence, location, and load.”

REFERENCES

1. LeBlanc K, Woo KY, VanDenKerkhof E, Woodbury MG. Skin tear prevalence and incidence in the long-term care population: a prospective study. J Wound Care. 2020;29(supp 7):S16–S22.

2. Nicolle LE. Infection control in long-term care facilities. Clin Infect Dis. 2000;31(3):752¬–756.

*CPT is a registered trademark of the American Medical Association 

ABOUT WOUND CARE PLUS, LLC

Wound Care Plus, LLC is the largest mobile wound care provider in the Midwest United States including operations in Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas, and Wisconsin. Our Advanced Mobile Wound Clinic On-Site Specialists diagnose wound and skin disorders, offer treatments, and perform procedures; they are “the advanced wound center brought to you!” Wound Care Plus LLC provide services to long-term care/skilled nursing facilities, long-term acute care hospitals, wound centers, residential care facilities, group homes, and assisted living facilities. They help guide facilities to provide better and more complete care by delivering wound care education, training, documentation, and consultation for wound care programs and quality assurance reviews, in addition to primary care for client wounds and skin ailments.

TissueTech Appoints Denise Spencer Vice President of 

Human Resources 

Change champion will focus on aligning associates with organization’s mission, vision, and values in accordance with strategic business objectives 

TissueTech, Inc., a pioneer in the clinical application of cryopreserved amniotic membrane and umbilical cord birth tissue allografts, announced today that Denise Spencer, MBA, and Senior Professional in Human Resources International, has joined the organization in the capacity of Vice President, Human Resources. In this role, Denise will provide transformational leadership and direction to attract, retain, motivate, and reward a high-performance workforce for TissueTech and its subsidiaries Amniox and Bio-Tissue.

TissueTech holds a long-standing commitment to diversity and inclusion, a fundamental area of expertise for Denise.  In April 2014, the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce recognized Bio-Tissue’s exemplary business performance and contributions to the community as a minority-owned company by awarding it with a 2014 Top Minority Business Award. 

“I am extremely pleased to welcome Denise to TissueTech’s senior leadership team. She is extremely well-versed in building high-performance teams throughout diverse and multi-cultural organizations such as ours,” said TissueTech co-founder Amy Tseng, President, and CEO. “She will be responsible for leading our human resources initiatives that support our strategic business plans and is well qualified with a solid reputation for building high-growth, culturally diverse teams.”

Denise received her undergraduate degree in Business and Hospitality Management from the University of Maine and is Lean Six-Sigma certified. She holds a Masters, Business Administration, Global Management from the University of Phoenix. Before joining TissueTech, Denise served as Vice President, Human Resources North America at GraceKennedy Foods, USA, and Vice President, Human Capital at AAR Corporation. 

“I am eager to tap into the insight and experience of TissueTech employees as we look to build the company to achieve high levels of growth over the coming years,” Spence said. “I’m excited to be a part of such an innovative company and to help bring on and develop the talent to take it to the next level.

ABOUT TISSUETECH, INC

TissueTech, Inc., the parent company of Amniox Medical, Inc. and Bio-Tissue, Inc., is a scientific and market leader in the field of regenerative medicine. TissueTech manufactures a broad range of ocular, surgical, wound care, and soft tissue products that are marketed under these subsidiaries. Since the company’s inception, clinicians have performed more than 500,000 human implants of the company’s products and published more than 360 peer-reviewed studies supporting its platform technology. TissueTech is committed to an unwavering culture of integrity that places our patients’ safety and clinical outcomes above all else. Learn more at https://tissuetech.com/.

A Little Humor

Tulsa physician injects humor into a medical mother goose book

 Tulsa Doctor Kent Denmark has always brought his sense of humor to his work as a physician. He specializes in emergency pediatric medicine where a bit of silliness is required on the job. Denmark honed that creativity and humor into his debut book, The Physician’s Guide to Mother Goose. The beautifully illustrated book uses children’s nursery rhymes to display the ICD-10 medical coding system that all doctors use for universal classification of medical care.

Now more than ever, Denmark sees the need for medical personnel to have a little humor in their world. “This book is a way for physicians or medical students to take a little break and have an inside laugh at the absurdity that often accompanies practicing medicine.” The book covers 33 nursery rhymes including “Humpty Dumpty” and “Little Bo-Peep.” 

Dr. Amer Aldeen, MD, FACEP, Chief Medical Officer (CMO) of USACS, had this to say about The Physician’s Guide to Mother Goose:  “The world of ICD-10 codes in medicine is fraught with overwhelming complexity in a rather quixotic quest for diagnostic precision. Recognizing that this vast compendium of specific diagnoses also has unending comedic value, Dr. Denmark has offered us his uniquely creative perspective, using the backdrop of common nursery rhymes. In this work, Dr. Denmark has wittily identified the sheer inanity of some of these diagnostic codes. At times, his poetic contributions are playfully lighthearted, but at other times they deliver a sarcastic bite that is more compelling.”

For more information, contact Samantha Ryan with Yorkshire Publishing at atsamantha.ryan@yorkshirepublishing or 918-394-2665. 

Commentary

Health care forecasts look hopeful for 2021 after an unpredictable year

By Eric Zerneke, Chief Commercial 

Officer, andros

If there was one prevailing trend of 2020 in the health care industry, it was uncertainty. This uncertainty was so pervasive and demanded so much attention and agility on the part of providers, plans, and the population at large, that there was not much time to reflect on anything as it was happening. Even though we are in the midst of another COVID-19 surge, there does appear to be a path forward, however, which will codify some of the lessons we’ve managed to learn from this past year. 

A BRIEF LOOK AT WHERE WE STAND 

Given some hindsight to 2020, we’ve noticed some pain points that will need to be addressed going forward in 2021, largely from health care organizations providing expanded digital services to account for a remote workforce. Cloud-based data management will need to dominate the space as opposed to antiquated manual systems, and new modes of care including telehealth and remote behavioral health will continue to see an expanded role in the health care landscape. 

On the plan front, the Affordable Care Act may be less under threat in a new Biden Administration committed to its upholding and expansion—despite pending court cases—and with recent referenda like California’s Proposition 22 coupled with a surging unemployment crisis, it appears that the number of citizens who rely on government-based health care will continue to rise. The industry will need to work to meet this demand through expanded networks of Medicare, Medicare Advantage, Medicaid expansion and other similar plans. What the health care industry looks like going into 2021 may be shifting to meet these new demands going into 2022.

Given an increased drive towards telehealth, an uptick in behavioral health needs, and a rise in unemployment driving more members to managed Medicaid and related government-based programs, all under the backdrop of a population that continues to age into Medicare at a rate of 11,000 people per day, the need to drive efficiencies, remove manual work, and bend the administrative curve is more important than ever. 

BREAKING DOWN DIGITAL BARRIERS 

One major revelation of the COVID-19 crisis was how woefully unprepared multiple economic sectors were to accommodate for a remote workforce; health care was no exception. It has been said that digital strategies were forced to evolve 6 years in a matter of 6 months. For an industry like health care that still relies on paper records and in-person administrative work, a shift to a more cloud-based data infrastructure became imperative to keeping operations running. 

As the population struggled with unstable employment in the midst of a pandemic, it quickly became clear that health care organizations would need to be more communicative and agile, translating constantly evolving government guidelines and transmitting that impact to providers and patients as quickly as possible. This increased demand for servicing and purchasing online meant a further data migration to the cloud, putting provider and patient information in front of plan stakeholders so they could make critical decisions in near real-time. 

The digital revolution did not just impact how plans were administered, but how care was delivered as well. With close contact being the main transmission point for COVID-19, new methods of care in telehealth expanded exponentially in 2020. And it is a trend that does not appear to be going anywhere. 

Likewise, the pandemic resulted in renewed calls for behavioral and mental health services to be more pervasive as isolation and uncertainty created an overall feeling of anxiety in the population. In a way, the mental health repercussions of the pandemic are a shadow pandemic in and of themselves and may linger well into 2021 and beyond. 

BUILDING HEALTH PLANS FOR THE FUTURE 

There was a sense of suspended animation within the health care industry throughout 2020. Health care organizations were focused on the immediate need of COVID-19 relief, and the presidential election made the long-term prospects of the Affordable Care Act hard to predict and difficult to plan for. In the wake of the 2020 election, with an administration that has expressed a commitment to expanding the Affordable Care Act, new demands on the system will continue to drive enhancements to the law. 

This presumed sense of clarity surrounding government health plans is additionally coinciding with conditions that may require more Americans to migrate to some form of government program health care. Two (2) of these main mitigating factors are an unemployment rate above 7% (although that number is projected to drop to above 5% by the end of 2021), which is causing a number of previously insured workers to lose their employer-based coverage, in addition to a growth in the gig economy sector. 

The latter of these trends is made increasingly relevant to the necessity of state-run health care options in light of Proposition 22 in California, which may very well serve as a bellwether for similar legislation nationwide. The resolution states that app-based transportation companies (eg, Uber and Lyft) are not required to provide benefits to their drivers as independent contractors. Because it is expected  that the number of workers in gig economy jobs will grow in the coming years, it can also be expected that there will be a push to expand access to health care to workers without employer-based coverage. 

The confluence of these 2 circumstances will surely impact health care in 2021, especially as plans are being developed for 2022 and 2023. To meet this increased demand in the market, health care organizations may look to expand their networks in Medicare, Medicare Advantage, Medicaid, and Medicaid managed care. Some of these plans will be developed from scratch, while others will represent health care organizations taking more advanced prospective views of the markets in which they are currently operating, and expanding to meet newfound demand.

The COVID-19 pandemic also sharpened the focus of existing issues in health care, specifically social determinants like poverty, race, and education disparities that put specific population groups at greater risk during health crises. Going forward, the government plans, especially those in Medicaid, will need to further accommodate for at-risk groups, including in-home services, ensuring safe living conditions, and partnerships with food banks, community organizations, and religious organizations all in service of creating a wider safety net for those in need.

The health plans administering these government-based programs will need to manage them closely, which can mean instituting vital system upgrades to ensure that administration costs do not outweigh the cost of providing services. Sharing data, removing administrative fees, and managing scalability will all be necessary considerations when building out these programs. 

STILL SOME UNCERTAINTY, BUT A BETTER OUTLOOK

While 2021 is sure to pose additional challenges to an industry just getting its bearings after a wildly unpredictable year—including the mass distribution of a COVID-19 vaccine—with some of the uncertainty settled by the presidential election, 2021 should offer a less tumultuous outlook. Health care organizations that embrace change and express a willingness to adapt will be rewarded in the coming year and beyond.

Eric Zerneke is the Chief Commercial Officer of andros. In his role, Zerneke drives commercial strategy, including spearheading all sales, business development, and marketing. With more than 25 years of health care and technology experience, Zerneke has brought various services and new market strategies from concept to reality and has been a catalyst in helping transform organizations. Prior to joining andros, he served as Chief Commercial Officer for HealthFortis Associates, where he was responsible for driving the company’s strategic vision and overall business growth. Before that, he was Executive Director and Director at athenahealth.