Here we go again! Hyperbaric Oxygen is one of the most effective therapies I have seen for preventing amputations, reducing healing times, and helping patients drastically improve their quality of life.  And as often happens, it gets stuffed into three familiar headings: Diving, Autisim, and Sports! This brief mention on Hyperbaric Chambers from WIRED Magazine, (by the way, great picture) highlights the ongoing lack of education regarding the proven benefits of Hyperbaric Medicine. Is it not “smart”, that people can actually keep their limbs? I have seen similiar stories over my time in this industry, most notably the myth of  Michael Jackson sleeping in a chamber.

I am glad that WIRED put in a mention of Hyperbaric Chambers, I hope more stories emerge of how beneficial and cost-effective this therapy is for medically accepted, Medicare approved indications.

Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy is carried out in a Hyperbaric Chamber, not a glorified sleeping bag with a zipper.

The latter was initially developed for mountain climbers to recover from altitude sickness, however now it seems to be standard equipment for every baseball and football player you hear about.

The former must be a A PVHO (Pressure Vessel Human Occupancy) approved chamber, and  has several regulations it must meet. It is a drug-delivery device, since it does deliver Oxygen under pressure to the patient. UHMS (Undersea Hyperbaric Medical Society) and the American College of Hyperbaric Medicine are great resources to learn more about this medical therapy. There are several manufactures that make these clinical chambers here in the US. One of the biggest, and our choice for chambers, is  Sechrist, located in CA.

I cringe each time I hear about a “bag” being referred to as a Hyperbaric Chamber.

I could scream from my soap box about this for hours, however bottom line, the true effects of Hyperbaric Therapy  change lives, and should be under the supervision of trained Physicians, using regulated and safe equipment.

Now you can climb back into your bag.

I was asked the other day to blog about my background and how I got involved in wound care. This is my attempt at describing the fantastic ride I have been on for the last eighteen years.
When I founded Wound Care Advantage in 2002, I had come from several unique experiences in our industry. I had worked as a commercial diver medic in the gulf of Mexico and off the West Coast. It was an amazing experience that gave me some great stories, (and a few less teeth) It didn’t take long to find out that I was a much better medic than I was a diver.

I jumped at the chance in 1994 to build a clinical hyperbaric center in Culver City California. My father was suffering from cancer at the time and I had become enraged at the lack of respect that he often encountered as he went from surgery to surgery. I looked forward to treating patients differently.

The day we opened that center and treated our first wound patient (all I can tell you is that maggots were involved, and not the purchased kind) I knew that this was what I would be doing in one form or another for the rest of my life. We could treat each patient with dignity and compassion, and they got dramatically better.

In 1996 three partners and myself opened Beverly Hills Hyperbarics. This was my first ownership experience, and it too, changed my life. After several years and a great deal of success, I felt the urge to get back into Wound Care. Going from Beverly Hills treating celebrities and post-surgical patients to the San Fernando Valley treating the worst of the worst wounds, was quite a change of pace, and it made feel as though I had found my purpose again.

In the middle of all of this I found an amazing woman to put up with me ( I am still learning Macedonian) we got married and settled down in a small town close to Pasadena called Sierra Madre, which is where Wound Care Advantage is based so I can walk to the office. We have two fantastic boys and I enjoy being a dad more than anything I have ever done.

In my spare Time I joined the Sierra Madre Volunteer Fire Department, and the funny thing is that I think fighting fires prepared me better for running my own company than anything else I could have done!

In 2002, I started what was then “Healing Services Consulting” (Now you know why we changed it to Wound Care Advantage) to focus on what I saw as a void in our industry; A management company intent on being considered the best partner possible, affordable, and focused on small community hospitals that had largely been ignored by many of the bigger companies. I avoided investors so that the company would remain dedicated to the mission.

We opened Lancaster Community Hospital Wound Care Advantage in 2002,  and had a great time building the program. The team became a family, and that is exactly the environment we have diligently tried to recreate in each new center we start. If there is a mistake to make in our industry, I have made it, possibly twice. However, over the next few years I was fortunate to have a team work with me that also saw my vision and were a lot smarter than me.

We developed e-wound and incorporated the coolest tool ever; HIPPA Compliant video-telemedicine program, into our operations.

We kept tweaking our models with the help of Hospital CEO’s and CFO’s that we were already working with allowing hospitals to choose the package that best meets their needs.

Through all of this we have grown into a national company with centers in eight states, and more on the way. We continue to value our status as a “best partner” above all else.

I am looking forward to what comes next, however to date, it’s been one heck of a ride!

During SAWC in San Diego this past month, three initials came up in almost every discussion and lecture; E.M.R., or Electronic Medical Record. It is clear that with the increasing required documentation, that it has become difficult to meet the charting standards without  the assistance of an electronic format.  A new publication by HMP Communications; “Today’s Wound Clinic” (www.todayswoundclinic.com), dedicated almost the entire Spring issue to the subject. Kathy Schaum in her lecture, “The Top Ten Reimbursement Tips for 2008”, brought up the benefits of such a system several times. During her talk, she discussed the requirement by CMS to state how certain products were attached to the patient, and though that is a simple checkbox in an EMR, I saw several panicked looks on the faces of  the attendees throughout the room as the realization of a missing component of their documentation began to take hold. The panicked look was replaced by a tortured look as the reality of what that missing piece could mean if they were audited by CMS set in! That one issue makes a great case for a Wound Care EMR.
Which brings me to the point of this posting, an EMR, no matter how good, is only one piece of the solution. Without a team dedicated to reviewing Local Coverage Determinations, National Coverage Determinations, documentation requirements,  reimbursement changes, and the details of our industry, your documentation may fall short regardless of the complexity, expense, or breadth of your EMR system.

This is precisely why we developed e-wound. In concert with our on site assistance, remote review of documentation and billing, and operational audits, we provide a team of Wound Care and Hyperbaric experts face-to-face right next to your documentation that can answer questions in real time and most recently, even translate for you over our HIPPA compliant telemedicine system.  (Currently we have WCA members able to speak Spanish, Thai, Laos, Hungarian, and even Macedonian!) E-wound is comprised of a full EMR, a telemedicine system, the WCA Dashboard and Library, and a fully integrated internet system for  in-patient and ancillary sites of service.
I feel that WCA is ahead of the curve by providing hospitals all of the services needed to succeed, the ongoing guidance needed to continue with that success, at a price-point that makes sense for the hospital. In my opinion, e-wound is the EMR solution. Please feel free to contact us for more information.

Mike Comer