Osceola Regional Medical Center

Osceola Considers WoundExpert Point of Service "Priceless"

A 235-bed facility in Kissimmee, Florida, Osceola Regional Medical Center supports an interdisciplinary wound clinic. They have recently completed their first year charting nearly 6,800 patient encounters for nearly 700 patients with WoundExpert Point of Service.

The Osceola clinic opened in December 2005 to provide care to an underserved population. The region was growing at a tremendous rate, and at the same time other wound programs had closed down or pulled out of the region.

Dot Weir, RN, CWON, CWS, had experience with the outcomes-tracking capabilities of WoundExpert in previous clinic roles. At the time, charting was often completed after the patient visit, sometimes the next day. The staff was buried in paper. Information on patient progression, outcomes, satisfaction, and compliance was hard to ascertain. A full-time employee was needed to translate charted elements into critical outcomes and administrative reports.

In the new clinic, efficiency was in mind from day one. A dedicated data entry staffer was not necessary, since electronic charting and scheduling replaced paper charting. Each treatment room had been designed with wall-mounted computers and internet connections.

Staff also had access to on-site education prior to implementation of WoundExpert as an electronic charting source. Dot adds, "WoundExpert makes for very easy chart auditing and charge reconciliation, saving me hours of manual look-up in paper charts."

WoundExpert’s Point of Service option was well-tested and HIPAA compliant. Regulatory requirements were all addressed, and the increased reporting possible from having the entire chart available electronically provided referral sources, home care, LTC, and coding partners with valuable assistance.

Today, the Wound Healing Center at Osceola Regional Medical Center is a state-of-the art outpatient department staffed by a team of physicians, nurses and physical therapists specialized and committed to the healing of open wounds.

Their comprehensive approach to wound healing facilitates the utilization of aggressive approaches to achieve healing for patients regardless of the length of time they have had their wound.

The Wound Healing Center practice is based upon the premise of first identifying the cause of the wound, the barriers to healing present in the individual patient, and then designing a treatment approach customized to meet that individual patient’s needs.

WoundExpert Point of Service empowers Osceola’s staff with the ability to perform thorough evaluations of each patient’s physical health, appropriate diagnostic studies, and wound evaluation.

Inpatient wound nurses assess and chart patients as well with specialized care plans and assessments, with the added benefit of seamlessly transferring those patients and wounds to the outpatient clinic for follow-up.

Additionally, performance improvement initiatives are facilitated by WoundExpert’s ad hoc reporting capabilities and Personal Dashboard Reporting, which places the most frequent reports – like benchmarked healing outcomes – on one page, reducing the amount of time to generate PI plans.

WoundExpert facilitates Osceola’ staff partnership with each patient’s primary physician in the coordination of the patient’s care, and reports of individual progress, which is sent to each patient’s referring and consulting physician(s) and other interested parties – payors, family, or caregivers.