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Oral Abstracts (Session 4 of 5)
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Moderator: Cindy Felty, RN, CNP, CWS (Presentation 35.4) Benchmarking wound healing outcomes in an outpatient clinic Catherine Rogers, APRN, BC, CWCN, CWS, SwedishAmerican Hospital, Rockford, Ill Statement of Clinical Problem: By what standard can individual outpatient wound care programs compare healing outcomes? How do we compare to other similar facilities and their healing rates? Does the introduction of wound care protocols improve healing rates/outcomes? Our goal is to determine how our healing rates for specific groups of wounds compare to other outpatient wound care programs. A review of literature did not provide the answers. There are no national standards or wound-type specific healing benchmarks for comparison. We found healing outcomes of product comparisons and benchmarking plus prevalence and incidence rates for pressure ulcers. Approach: Since we were unable to find any national benchmarking data from which to compare our clinic outcomes, the decision was made to develop our own benchmark and use that data to review and advance our wound care protocols. A review of the most common types of wound that are seen at our clinic can be gathered into 5 categories: pressure, venous, diabetic/neuropathic, nonhealing surgical, and trauma/other. A tool was developed to capture the data relevant to determining the type of wound and when healing occurred. A substantial number of clinic charts were reviewed to establish our initial benchmark. Subsequent data collections provided comparisons to the original benchmark. Outliers (healing time frames extending well beyond the benchmark rate) are individually reviewed for detail. Outcomes: After 4 years of data collection and analysis, our clinic has been able to establish our initial baseline and ongoing healing rates for 5 specific wound categories. Annual retrospective review of the data provides our team with feedback on how specific wound care protocols influence outcomes. This also provides a general frame of reference for determining when a wound may close. |
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