Over eighty-million people were born between 1946 and 1964. This translates into the largest number of seniors ever experienced in the United States. These seniors are also experiencing the highest levels of Diabetes, Vascular Disease, Obesity and wounds ever seen in our history.

Over the next two decades these baby-boomers will put an unprecedented strain on Social Security and Medicare.In the mid 1940’s, 42 workers supported each retiree. Today, that ratio is down to only three workers per retiree, and when the boomers have all retired, it will shrink to one. Because of rising medical costs, Medicare is in the worst position. The hospital insurance portion of that program is already dipping into its shrinking reserves.With these issues on the way, and an uncertain plan for Healthcare reform, it is even more imperative than ever before, that hospitals carefully manage every dollar.

A profitable out-patient program like Wound Care and Hyperbaric Medicine will only see it’s demand increase with this aging population and the high prevalence of Diabetes. However, retaining the revenue generated will become paramount. The Wound Care Advantage team has been keenly aware of this dynamic and developed our e-wound and WCA program specifically with these demographic changes in mind. A Wound program can help lower your Length of Stay, assist in minimizing “Never-Events” as related to wounds, manage patients with several co-morbidities in an out-patient environment, and bring in much needed revenue to hospital quickly and consistently.

By providing the lowest cost solution for our partners, we provide them the Advantage of being prepared for the coming storm.

When you close your eyes and try to imagine health care of the future, what does it look like?
For me the answer to that question was always a Jestons like TV screen where a doctor would immediately speak with me face to face, solve my problem, and have my medicine sent to me without ever having to leave my house. What can I say? I watched a lot of cartoons as a kid.

So when WCA set out to implement a medical communication sytem between all of our centers, that Jetsons like system was our goal. After two years we had an exceptiional tele-presence system to work with. It operated only on on Mac Computers initially, now it works on PC’s, and ran over standard internet connections. It is HIPPA compliant and connects every member of our team across the country together for instant face-to-face discussions.

We rolled the system out to each member of our corporate team first. It allowed us to share blue-prints, marketing materials, and reports immediatly with our entire team at one time, then save the video meeting for future review. Once we became more comfortable with the system, we substantially reduced our use of phones for team communications.
When we introduced the system to our physicians in each center, things really got interesting. Physicians used the system to consult with each other and show wounds in real time giving each patient the benefit of two heads instead of one.

We have now rolled this system into Skilled Nursing Facilities (SNF) with a new model focused on dealing with a very difficult population of patients.

No plans for robots serving us or food in pill form, but I think we got at least on piece of the Jetsons right!

Over the past few weeks I have been reading a book entitled; “The Innovators Prescription: A Disruptive Solution for HealthCare by Clayton M. Christensen, and I can’t help but feel that the solution the authors advocate is almost a direct description of out-patient Wound Care Programs. The book outlines a disruptive approach that allows patients with specific health disorders to be treated by a comprehensive team focused on one “problem set”, outside of the expensive confines of acute hospital space.

This group would be streamlined by having team members to facilitate each task, and must be able to share experience quickly to assist in immediate medical problem solving. Patient care will improve as this group comes to develop “precision medicine”, and costs will decline as an expensive therapy in the hands of only highly trained experts can be transfered to a wider population of health care providers using new technology and training. An arcane practice will essentially become the standard of care over time.

Wound Care fits this description perfectly; when I first started in this industry 15 years ago, we were ecstatic if a patient healed a non-healing wound in 65 days. Currently Wound Care Advantage is seeing an average of only 40 days to heal a wound. Amputations are being avoided by the thousands, and the cost of treating these patients has been dramatically reduced by keeping them out of the expensive venue of acute care.
Medicare, the primary payor for Wound Care due to the patient demographics, sees a dramatic cost savings utilizing out-patient wound care programs versus the sporatic and spread out approach used in the past. A typical course of treatment will cost $1,500 to $2,000 dollars for a wound versus hundreds of thousands of dollars over a lifetime for the care and surgery involved in an amputation. Not to mention that most patients like to keep their body parts.

WCA has been on the track of reducing the cost of this therapy for the past several years by putting all of the information our administrative and medical team members have developed online in our e-wound system. We have also developed a video-based telemedicine system which allows instant collaboration with medical teams across the country to help heal a patient faster. We have introduced models that significantly reduces the cost of providing these services.

As Congress and the American population rattle down the road to Healthcare Reform, I hope this model that our industry has developed becomes a center-point in discussions to deliver better care at a lower cost. That would be real Health Care Reform.

Mike Comer, CEO

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

« go back — keep looking »