Page 15 - HME Business, May 2017

Wound Care: Financial First Aid
As HME provider businesses look for new ways to diversify and drive both funded and retail revenue, wound care could help them patch up their bottom line.
By David Kopf
ith some provider profit-and-loss statements hemorrhaging so deep in the red that they look like they need stitches,
providers are looking for a effective ways to bandage up lost revenues. Wound care just might be the fix that will suture up
revenue structures and put their performance back on a profitable track. The wound care opportunity is broad. There are multiple patient groups
that need wound care services; a varied range of referral partners and revenues sources that go well beyond the Medicare model; and some core HME product offerings that providers should be able to knowledgeably support. With the right level of commitment, a provider can establish itself as a expert resource in its healthcare marketplace.
“It’s not going away,” says Heather Trumm, BSN, RN, CWON, the director of wound care for VGM Group Inc. “There are going to be more wound
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issues. ... that’s based on the demographics of our population.” Trumm points out three key patient groups that are growing and will
need wound care services: diabetes patients, the elderly and the the bariatric population. Each of these groups have their own propensity to getting wounds, and needing therapies that can help those wounds heal.
“With diabetics, what generally happens when a patient has diabetes, their sugar is high in their blood,” she days. “The way that I describe it is, when you have diabetes your blood flow is a little bit more sluggish when it’s got sugar in it. So for one, they probably will develop neuropathy, which is a loss of a sensation in their digits or extremities.”
And when a patient has poor blood flow and a loss of feeling, they can run into a situation where it takes them time before they discover they’ve suffered a cut or injury on an extremity, and once discovered the wound
hme-business.com | May 2017 | HMEBusiness 15