When Alliance Community Hospital partnered with Wound Care Advantage™ to open an on-site clinic treating non-healing wounds last spring, we knew we were meeting a community need.
What we didn’t realize was the impact of WCA™ on the lives of patients throughout the United States.
According to a story in the October 25th edition of the Wall Street Journal, patients in need of wound care treatment are choosing WCA™ facilities for their care in record numbers nationwide.
Actually, the prevalence of WCA™ centers and their role in the betterment of the lives for hundreds of thousands of wound care patients all over the country came as no surprise to the WCA™ at ACH team.
“We are witness, every day, to the success of wound care treatment and the positive impact it has on patients and their family members,” said Paul Hudzik, DO. He is a Vascular Surgeon and also the Medical Director of the WCA™ program at ACH.
“This is precisely why we entered this affiliation with WCA™; we identified a need to help those in our community suffering from chronic wounds related to diabetes and other diseases/health issues. The fact that we have such a hands-on role in the healing of so many is, quite simply, the reason we are here: to provide compassionate, dignified care of the body, mind and spirit of each one of our patients,” said Kerry Swanson, RN, CNA, BC and Sr. VP of Operations at ACH.
Wound care refers to treatment of chronic or non-healing wounds that can be associated with infection, diabetes, radiation, arterial or venous disease and post surgical sites. Treatment encompasses a multidisciplinary approach to healing that often includes hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT), at which the ACH staff is specially trained and highly proficient.
WCA™ at ACH has outcomes that average 99% as compared with those of other programs that range between 87-88%. The typical goal outcome is 90%, which means the ACH program is 12% higher than the national outcome average. The specialized staff of Wound Care professionals at WCA™ is supported by the strength of ACH, a fully-accredited Joint Commission hospital that offers the compassionate, integrative care that only a Planetree hospital can provide and buoyed by an almost 90% board-certified physician component, WCA™ at ACH is the obvious choice for anyone in the region seeking wound care treatments.
And the word is spreading.
“In our six months of operation alone, we have healed 60 chronic wounds with an average of 37 days to heal our patients. That may not seem like a lot, but to a patient who has had a wound for 20 years; one wound healed is a miracle. In fact, we’re seeing so many patients that we had to recently expand our facility; a dilemma we are only too happy to accommodate,” said Melissa Loudon, program director of the WCA™ ACH program.
“We’re entirely committed to growing our clinic. We will never stop working to improve our quality of care – and the quality of life for so many local people,” said Swanson.