Honest Reporting of Healing Rates Using Patient Risk Stratification – A CMS Requirement

Course Description

Moderator/Speaker: Caroline Fife, MD, CWS, FUHM
Speaker: Marissa J. Carter, PhD, MA, MAPWCA

As part of healthcare reform, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will determine the cost-to-benefit ratio of advanced therapeutic interventions in wound care in order to tie treatment to outcome. Analysis of the cost of care for any individual patient requires that patients be stratified according to their risk of a poor outcome. This practice is the norm in virtually all areas of healthcare EXCEPT wound care. In order to determine the value of an advanced therapy, it is necessary to understand whether a patient was likely to heal without it. Risk stratification also allows practitioners caring for the sickest of patients to be fairly measured against their peers whose patients are less complex. This session will explain why the reporting of inflated healing rates hurts the field of wound care and individual practitioners and discusses the options for risk stratification.