Wounds remain a fact of life for skilled nursing facilities. Even if your facility seldom, if ever, sees a pressure wound, patients will inevitably experience surgical wounds, circulatory issues, and other dermatological conditions that result in ulcers and other wounds.
Unfortunately, wounds are not the only issue your team has to address, and few facilities have the resources to keep a full-time wound care provider on the payroll.
That’s where a dedicated wound care specialist, ideally one backed by a full-service wound care management practice, comes into play. By entrusting care of your patients’ wounds to a provider who focuses exclusively on addressing wounds and their underlying causes, you’ll see three immediate benefits: reduced patient pain, improved patient outcomes, faster healing with bedside treatment, and greater support for your staff.
This month, we’re taking an in-depth look at these benefits to show you how an advanced wound care specialist can benefit your skilled nursing facility.
Wound Care Specialists Reduce Pain for Your Residents
We’ll address the most important benefit of partnering with a wound care specialist right up front: they relieve pain.
Leaving aside the potential complications, dangerous infections, and countless other medical problems that untreated wounds can cause, the simple fact of the matter is that wounds hurt. Even a small pressure wound can cause excruciating pain that interferes with a patient’s sleep, routines, and overall quality of life.
The best way to relieve that pain is with a holistic approach to treating the source of the pain, and that means not only addressing the wound but also its underlying causes. A dedicated wound care specialist has the experience needed to assess wounds and their causes accurately. If a specialist’s care is required, they know who to call for appropriate treatment. And when they make clinical visits, they are laser-focused on precisely one thing: healing the wound and relieving the patient’s pain.
Wound Care Specialists Improve Patient Outcomes
Other than the intense pain and discomfort wounds cause, they’re also a prime source of secondary complications and infections. The body’s skin is the primary component of the immune system, and any break in that protective layer invites a host of different pathogens that can cause any number of conditions, some life-threatening.
A dedicated wound care specialist will take steps to prevent wounds from becoming infected or, if the wound is already infected, take steps to mitigate the infection.
Timely Assessment and Treatment
Wounds are more manageable in their early stages before significant tissue damage sets in. Your facility’s wound care partner will be able to assess patients during their regular visits, identifying emerging wounds while they’re still in their early stages. They’ll also work closely with your staff and help them become better at recognizing the warning signs of conditions like pressure wounds, diabetic wounds, circulation deficiencies, and other developing wounds.
Proper Wound Care and Hygiene
Different types of wounds require different standards of care. Your wound care partners will use various steps to promote healing, including maintaining a clean environment for the wound site, creating optimal conditions for wound healing, and using the correct dressing techniques. They’ll also train your staff on the correct management practices for each patient’s wound and direct them on how to provide the correct standard of care.
Wound Debridement
If a wound is already infected or necrotic, debridement of the wound site – removal of the dead or infected tissue – is widely accepted as the most effective way to promote healing and mitigate further complications. Sharp debridement, the most common treatment, involves carefully cutting away affected tissue to allow healthy tissue to grow back, close the wound, and relieve the patient’s pain.
Care for the Underlying Condition
Wounds are not spontaneous. Each has its own pathology, and only when the underlying cause is addressed is the patient likely to experience a positive outcome. From pressure injuries to severe circulatory problems, your wound care specialist will be skilled at assessing and diagnosing the causes of each patient’s wounds and directing a course of treatment.
Patients whose wounds have been appropriately managed see demonstrably better outcomes, with less pain, fewer secondary infections, and an overall better quality of life.
Wound Care Specialists Allow Your Residents to Heal at Home
When looking for a wound care provider, on-site care should be a requirement. Patients will almost always see faster healing when their treatments can take place in the comfort of their own beds without needing to be transported back and forth to a hospital or wound center.
This service improves patient quality of life, reduces transportation expenses, and removes the liability involved with frequent transport. Your wound care provider should be able to perform everything from assessments to debridement on-site.
Wound Care Specialists Support Your Staff
Ideally, your wound care specialist works with a full-service wound care management practice that can provide your residents with the wound care services they need and also supports your facility through on-site care and non-clinical support services that streamline your wound care program and reduce your operating overhead.
Your wound care specialist should support your staff. They should involve your clinical staff in every aspect of the wound care process, empowering your team to provide the highest possible standard of care between wound care provider visits. They should offer detailed guidance on each patient’s case and strive to have their notes charted quickly so that your team has the most up-to-date information on every patient’s care.
However, your wound care partner’s support should extend beyond clinical services. When looking for a wound care provider, find one who offers administrative support:
- EMR and billing integration
- Coding and billing support
- Logistics and scheduling assistance
- Advanced staff training
- IT support for EMR solutions
- Actionable data and reporting for your wound care program
- Inquiry support in the event of a regulatory intervention
Trust the Wound Care Specialists at QSM
At Quality Surgical Management, our team is dedicated to relieving patient pain and improving patient outcomes through advanced wound care management. Our providers visit every one of our partner facilities weekly, handling nearly every aspect of wound care right at the patient’s bedside. Our robust, in-house EMR platform, QSmartCare, interfaces directly with most common EMR software, allowing seamless integration, and our team is ready to support your facility with what you need to keep your residents healthy and free from dangerous wounds.
Call QSM to Find Out About Our Facility Partnerships and Advanced Wound Care Management Services – 800-226-8874