Electronically diagnosing wounds is particularly important in medical centers, long term acute care hospitals, nursing homes, and to to remotely connect with specialists if providers are located in rural communities.
In this country, there is a high percentage of patients with multiple chronic wounds that may require comprehensive and consistent patient records and the need for providers, specialists, and care givers to accurately document the information.
Today, reimbursement is based on accurate wound assessment and many depend on busy wound care specialists to monitor the work of less skilled staff working at the point-of-care. Multiple care givers are involved in wound care and very often requires information to be readily shared. This may create a heavy documentation workload to meet CMS and state healthcare reporting requirements.
An example of an effective system in use to provide expert care in wound assessments is taking place at the Parkview Medical Center www.parkviewmc.com in Pueblo, Colorado. The Center licensed for 350 acute-care beds and serving 14 surrounding counties chose the ARANZ Medical Silhouette® www.aranzmedical.com product suite. The system is used by doctors at the point-of-care to provide greater accuracy in measuring wounds and to better document their patients’ wound healing.
Silhouette is an FDA-approved electronic wound assessment system enabling caregivers to capture digital wound images, take 3D measurements, and then synchronize the data into a central database via a secure internet connection. The next step is to incorporate these records into the electronic records system where experts can review the wound assessment and collaborate using a web browser.
Steve Shirley, CIO Parkview Medical Center reports, “Our small wound care team is using 18 SilhouetteStar cameras and the Silhouette wound assessment system across all departments in the Medical Center. The Center expects to further expand to the managed clinics in the southern Colorado area. The integration of Silhouette with our electronic health records system reduces the potential for errors in data handling.”