Page 16 - HME Business, November/December 2021

Wound Care
pharmacy and provider staff understand the different types of wound care, how to select the right dressings, and generally expand their expertise when it comes to wound care.
“We developed Wound Care Boot Camp to provide a no-cost, high quality, on-demand on-ramp for all caregivers and organizations who want to take their next step in becoming a ‘wound hero.’ Whether you are a patient, lay caregiver, nurse, therapist, NP or physician...if you are interested in wound care, this is a great place to start,” says Josh Heuchan, founder and managing director, Healiant Training Solutions.
Additionally, VGM Wound Care recently released a Wound Care Program Guide that helps VGM members assess whether or not they should add a wound care program to their business, and if so, how to launch and develop that wound care pro- gram. It also provides additional resources and contacts. VGM members can down- load a copy of the Wound Care Program Guide from the members-only portal. VGM Wound Care is also developing a compan- ion for the Program Guide that focuses on the wound care vendor partners available to VGM members and how they can offer support in the wound care space.
“This Wound Care Program Guide is designed to help our members, who are part of something bigger, develop and grow their wound and skincare business,” Trumm explains. “The home medical equipment community provides patient- focused care every day. Implementing a skin and wound care program within your HME business means you are providing positive outcomes for your patients and touching lives.”
To help relate all this information to reimbursement, Trumm works with her colleague Ronda Buhrmester, senior director of Payer Relations & Reimburse- ment at VGM to provide an hour-long “Wound Care 101” course in which Trumm discusses the care aspects of various dressings and other products, and then Burhrmester covers the various reimbursement requirements for the related items per Medicare.
“To me, the more that they are educated and the more that they get entrenched into wound care, the more successful they will be, the more referrals they will get,” Trumm says. “They will
be looked at by their referral sources as local solutions providers that know the patients already.”
YOUR CLIENTS WILL NEED IT
Regardless of any points of hesitation, wound care is an important care seg- ment because while it might seem a little daunting or scary due to potential com- plexity or the very nature of the care — wounds — it’s pretty clear that many of the clients with whom a DME pharmacy or provider will be working either has or will have a wound. In fact, there are a lot of clients that need wound care. Trumm offers seniors as a good example:
“Older adult patients are at risk because the fat content in their skin decreases,” she says. “Older people get skin tears so easily because we lose fatty tissue in our skin as we age.”
“The diabetic population is another population that is at high risk for wounds, because of neuropathy; they can’t feel,” Trumm continues. “And with diabetes, you’re going to heal slower than a person that doesn’t have diabetes. Also, with diabetes, you could have a cardiovascular component as well. You probably have some venous issues or some arterial is- sues that compound the problem, which therefore decrease the wound healing even further.”
Another good group of clients for wound care is patients using long-term oxygen therapy because they typically also have comorbidities, Trumm says.
“When these folks get a wound — maybe they hit their foot or bump
their arm — if they’re on oxygen, then obviously they’re not getting their own oxygen for a reason,” she explains. “The body needs twice the amount of oxygen in the first phase of wound healing to heal a wound. So if they are depleted with any oxygen, it’s going to take them longer to heal.”
If anything, the list of client groups that potentially need wound care from
a DME pharmacy quickly stretches to cover people with any type of peripheral arterial disease, cardiovascular disease, venous disease, and any of those with comorbidities.
“So those are some great examples, and I think they really show that wound care applies to really anyone that provid- ers are serving,” Trumm explains. n
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DRIVING INNOVATION IN WOUND CARE
Negative pressure wound therapy devices help in the healing and closure of wounds by using a pump and special dressings to create negative pressure (a vacuum) at well-sealed wound sites to help remove fluids and infectious materials while drawing wound edges together.
In recent years, single-use or disposable NPWT have seen use in post-surgical wound healing and other applications because they are simple, can be worn by the patient, and provide a sufficient amount of therapy time (seven days).
However, as innovative as they are, an obstacle in the proliferation of these devices has been that there isn’t stan- dardized reimbursement for disposable devices. An effort on Capitol Hill is trying to change that.
In April, Reps. G.K. Butterfield (D- N.C.) and Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) launched a bill that would update CMS payment rules regarding home-based wound care. That was then followed companion legislation introduced in the Senate that was introduced by Sens. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Michael Ben- net (D-Colo.)
The bills would put disposable items such as disposable negative pressure wound therapy (NPWT) devices on par with non-disposable NPWT devices by standardizing the payment methodology nationally.
The policy would apply a neutral area wage index for payments made to home health agencies (HHAs), clarify that payments to HHAs for disposable NPWT devices are to be made for the device itself, not accompanying profes- sional services, and reduce administra- tive burdens by streamlining the billing forms.
VGM Wound Care’s Trumm says that there are some dealers currently offering single-use NPWT but are doing it on a retail basis. Finally getting reimbursement would help drive the use of disposable devices and open up new opportunities for DME dealers.