Skin and Wound Case Study

After identifying the need to improve real-time visibility into tracking and caring for patient’s wounds to provide optimal patient care delivery, a large skilled nursing organization adopted PointClickCare’s Skin & Wound solution.

Helping customers positively impact the lives of residents through improved wound management and treatment, resulting in decreased wound care costs, improved healing rates, and improved overall health.

Challenge

Wound care management and organizational risk

Solution

Implementation of Skin & Wound

Outcome

Comprehensive wound care documentation and increased healing rates

How PointClickCare Helped

Our SNF customer needed a better way to monitor wound treatment in real time across all facilities and gain a better understanding of which residents were most at risk. They struggled with inaccurate wound measurements and inconsistent and incomplete documentation of wounds.

After identifying the problems they wanted to solve, they invested in PointClickCare’s Skin & Wound solution, which allowed for improved visibility into new wounds, transparency in the evaluation process, and visibility in wound progress leading to earlier interventions on higher risk wounds.

In 2017, the customer adopted the Skin & Wound solution to give caregivers the ability to evaluate wounds and see how wounds are trending. Clinicians can document wounds at the resident’s bedside, re-evaluate the progression of the wounds and have all data available at their fingertips. The ability to monitor these wounds through real-time surveillance, share with other care team members, as well as family members, enables full transparency.

Using the PointClickCare Skin & Wound mobile app alleviates problems in tracking wound healing by providing photo-recognition technology. This visual is a reliable method to accurately and consistently measure the wound week to week. The app identifies changes in wound size, shape, and color, even those not noticeable to the caregiver, and automatically calculates measurements including surface area, length, and width. Caregivers can add treatment notes, review, and monitor progress over time, and easily note changes from assessment to assessment. This significantly improves outcomes through transparency and increases collaboration through access to critical data.

Through the web application, the care team can oversee resident wound status and progress at the organization, facility, and resident levels. Dashboards allow organizations to quickly view new wounds, what types of wounds are occurring and who is most at risk for developing a pressure ulcer. The individual resident view shows all wound documentation, an at-a-glance progression, and a more in-depth view of evaluations for current and active wounds to inform decision-making if other treatments are needed to help the healing process.

Dashboards allow organizations to quickly view new wounds, what types of wounds are occurring, and who is most at risk for developing a pressure ulcer. The individual resident view shows all wound documentation, an at-a-glance progression, and a more in-depth view of evaluations for current and active wounds to inform decision-making if other treatments are needed to help the healing process.

Clinicians gained total visibility into wounds that were present at admission, and all newly acquired, in-house wounds

Total visibility allowed for early and appropriate intervention on higher-risk wounds. Skin & Wound supports the Braden Scale Assessment for prediction of pressure ulcer risk

Intervention and follow-up care was provided in a timely manner resulting in improved closure rates as wounds are healing more quickly

19% improved healing rate for new wounds acquired in-house

47% reduction in pressure ulcer prevalence

47% reduction in wound-related legal costs

Length of stay decreased by 32 days for wound patients

$2500/year savings in civil monetary penalties per facility

By capturing images and wound assessments while eliminating handwritten or redundant documentation, providers can reduce pressure ulcers and increase healing rates which can result in lower DME and supply costs. The customer noted a dramatic reduction in wound healing time and pressure ulcer prevalence dropped about 47% as measured against the Quality Metrics National average for 15-months after deployment of Skin & Wound digital wound technology, with improved Star Rating. This resulted in using fewer supplies for treatment of the same wound which in turn saves the organization money. Since wound care is a supply intensive clinical area, quicker healing times result in lower DME costs, bed rentals, treatments, and other supply costs.

Another benefit is that length of stay (LOS) decreased significantly with the use of Skin & Wound, nearing the average length of stay for non-wound patients. After 18 months of deploying Skin & Wound, the length of stay for wound patients decreased by 32 days, which was additionally beneficial to drive down costs.

As documentation improved, the customer was able to optimize staff resources by using technology to document, saving paperwork and administrative tasks, driving down documentation time for nursing staff, reducing overtime, and delivering bottom line value.

PointClickCare’s Skin & Wound also reduced civil monetary penalties (CMP). Pressure injuries are a leading cause of lawsuits, and the solution provides the right tools for consistency and accuracy in wound documentation and images. Risk of litigation penalties are minimized with visual evidence of wound progression and complete treatment documentation.

Key Results, Facility-wide:

19% improved healing rate for new wounds acquired in-house
47% reduction in pressure ulcer prevalence
47% reduction in wound-related legal costs
Length of stay decreased by 32 days for wound patients
$2500/year savings in civil monetary penalties per facility

Now with Skin & Wound remote imaging technology, this customer has improved the efficiency of managing wound and image data across the care team and charting all information into the PointClickCare EHR. Reliable, consistent wound documentation enables better wound care and faster clinical decisions leading to improved resident care outcomes.

Interested in achieving the same success through improved visibility into wound management?

Contact our team to discuss a specific solution customized for your needs.