March 9, 2015
Wound care expands hospital’s services
A new wound care center planned for the Cortland Regional Medical Center will expand services to patients who need immediate assistance with open wounds that can be healed with state-of-the-art technology.
David Kobis, vice president of operations at the hospital, said Cortland is one community that does not have a wound care center, and the hospital would otherwise have to refer patients to nearby centers in Syracuse, Ithaca and Binghamton.
The wound care center, expected to open mid-June, will offer different treatments for people who have trouble healing open wounds.
The goal is to treat patients with open wounds by forcing oxygen into the affected area with special hyperbaric chambers or to use stem cells to help the healing process.
Dr. Roger Scott, vice president of medical affairs and chief medical officer, said Friday afternoon the hospital recently put together a physician recruitment committee with county physicians. The committee identified that the county would benefit from a wound care center.
“It’s really the physician community who said this is a need,” Scott said last week.
Kobis said the hospital is working with Healogics, a national company that provides wound healing services to centers.
“One of the benefits of partnering with a national group like Healogics ... they have a template for developing a center,” he said.
Scott said some of the wounds the hospital would treat include foot ulcers, diabetic wounds and people with impaired vascular systems, due to diseases such as diabetes or congestive heart failure.
“It’s either the blood supply heading to the wound or the blood supply coming out of the wound,” Scott said. “Most wounds would be lower leg wounds.”
The full treatment takes 90 minutes, Scott said, with a 30-minute window on each end to fill the hyperbaric chamber with oxygen.
The idea of the chamber is to simulate the pressure of being underwater, which forces oxygen into the wound.
The new center will have two single chambers available and treatment can be offered up to at least once a week.
Other treatments include regenerative medicine, which uses stem cells to heal the wound and debridement, which removes material in the wound, thereby helping stem cells to be introduced and start the healing process.
Scott said once the wound is healed, the patient would no longer need treatment.
“There’s a lot of research and technology that’s gone into wound healing, because it’s so important,” Scott said Friday afternoon. “We expect to have everything and anything that gets wounds to heal.”
Kobis said the center will have about five people on staff, including nurses, technicians and a full-time medicaldirector.
As far as costs are concerned, Kobis said he would not know the initial costs until a year or two after the center has been in operation.
“It is reimbursed by Medicare and by private insurance so we’re not exactly sure what the financial results will be ... but we’re confident the program will pay for itself,” he said.
Kobis added the center will provide an opportunity for residents who need immediate treatment.
“The sad thing is sometimes people have these wounds and they learn to live with them,” Kobis said, referring to people who cannot get to a center.
Scott and Kobis said there are not any risks to these types of treatments, noting the community has a need for a wound care center nearby.
“They have thousands of these centers across the country and they’ve been established for a long time ... it’s pretty safe technology,” Kobis said.
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