How long is your contract?

This past week WCA was asked to review a program to determine what if any improvements need to be made. We were shocked to find out that the hospital had a fifteen year contract with the management company. Is it just us or does that seem ridiculous? Now more than ever, hospitals need flexible, financially sound programs to help support their hospitals. Wound Care Advantage offers agreements as short as one year, with the option for each hospital to customize our package to meet their unique needs.

Give us a call if this sounds like an approach that makes sense to you, however we do have this great deal on a fifty-year contract.

Mike Comer, CEO

During the last few months we have received several calls from Hospitals that have a current Wound Care and or a Hyperbaric Program looking for more cost effective models. Many are currently with a management company with the contract coming to an end, and they don’t know if they have the needed tools and skills to operate the program independently. Others have been operating their own programs which are having difficulties achieving financial success and are not able to track their data.

In the past, there has traditionally been three ways to start and operate a Hospital Based Wound Care and Hyperbaric Program;
1. Using a “Turn-Key Management Company”
2. Using a Consultant.
3. The Home Depot approach, Do-It-Yourself.Each has benefits and drawbacks.

Traditional turn-key management offers all of the components you need usually including Hyperbaric Chambers and staff, however the cost for a hospital can often times be well over 60% of annual Gross Revenue annually. These companies usually have contract lengths of five years or longer and leave with their equipment and team at the end of a contract giving hospitals little control over their own programs. Turn-key style programs make sense for hospitals that do not want to invest in expensive Hyperbaric Equipment or would like to avoid adding additional personnel to their payroll. (WCA has developed a unique approach to this model allowing for shorter contract times and our “Flip” model which allows equipment and personnel to “flip” over to the hospital at the end of a pre-determined contract time with ongoing support and services from WCA).

Consultants appear to be more cost effective, however there price rarely includes important components your program needs for success including a data system, documentation updates, and ongoing reviews of regulations and billing to ensure your facilities continued success.The do-it-yourself approach is the least costly way of starting up a program, however the time and expense associated with developing a program from scratch is often more daunting than anticipated, and unless the hospital has an experienced employee, the cost associated with construction, development, or billing mistakes, can easily erode any savings expected.

We felt that in order to provide the essential services of a comprehensive wound care program to every community, new cost-effective models needed to be developed. Our answer to this challenge are the “Direct Partner” and “Assistance” models. These models gives partner hospitals the option to choose only the services they need, give them control of their own programs, provids partners on-site experts for start-up and operation, implements a comprehensive Electronic Medical Record and Data Collection system, assists in the purchase of their own equipment, provides them with qualified wound care and hyperbaric specialists that they employ,  minimizes contract length to as little as one year, and allows hospitals to retain their revenue by providing a low fixed price close to the salary of one employee.

Our program includes all of the items you need to operate your program, a customized marketing and public relations program, the first internet-based telemedicine system designed specifically for Wound Care and Hyperbaric Medicine, a complete Electronic Medical Record and Data system, the WCA dashboard, and the on-site expertise of our implementation and operation teams. Please Take the time to look around on our site and feel free to contact me at mike@thewca.com with your comments or insights.

I truly believe that this approach is the better choice for hospitals.

Mike Comer, CEO