Tag: Caroline Fife

by Caroline Fife, M.D.

Nearly 200 years ago, the brilliant French historian Alexis de Tocqueville traveled the fledgling United States and observed that in lieu of hereditary wealth and aristocracy, we were building a society on individualism, market capitalism, and honoring the hard-working common man. However, in his 1835 book, he cautioned that laws could never be a substitute for public morality and that such a society was less endangered by “the great profligacy of a few”, but by the “laxity of morals amongst all.” Those words were prophetic. Individualism and market capitalism have enabled us to create the most technologically advanced healthcare system in the world, but Medicare will be bankrupt in less than 10 years. Although there are a lot of reasons for this dire situation, they include “a laxity of morals amongst all and the great profligacy of a few.” … read more

by Caroline Fife, M.D.

Wound Week™ 2022 is an innovative, unparalleled educational opportunity that will feature superior content delivered by multidisciplinary faculty with true clinical expertise. This conference will allow clinician driven training and education in wound care, vascular and hyperbaric medicine. In addition to education and training, this meeting will offer unmatched clinician networking.

The American Professional Wound Care Association (APWCA) is the Host Society for Wound Week™ 2022. The Education Planning Committee (EPC), under the leadership of the APWCA provided input to create the agenda and determine the content for the preconference and main conference sessions. The EPC also suggested content experts that could be selected to serve as faculty … read more

As a board member of the Alliance of Wound Care Stakeholders, I invite you to our upcoming Wound Care Evidence Summit where we will explore the key question: What type and quantity of clinical evidence is required by payers in formulating positive coverage policies for wound care products and procedures?

If you are involved in the field of wound care, you know that wound care coverage policies are becoming increasingly restrictive. You try to get the payer to approve the use of a product that’s available on the market and that works in your hands, only to be told it isn’t covered because the payer isn’t convinced by the data. Or, you are pretty sure that a product will help a patient with a limb-threatening wound … read more

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CMS (the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) has approved 9 wound-care and hyperbaric medicine relevant quality measures for the 2022 reporting year. The quality measures were developed jointly by the US Wound Registry (USWR) and the Alliance of Wound Care Stakeholders. You can view the details here … read more

I was introduced to this problem early in my career. More than two decades ago, I was an Associate Professor at the University of Texas Health Science Center, Houston … Wound Center was the first of its kind (at least, that I know of) to perform “point of care” electronic documentation (in the room with the patient), using a system that internally calculated the physician’s billed level of service and collected discrete data about patients and their wounds … CMS proposed a facility billing system based on wound SIZE. That proposed system was never adopted because during a meeting with CMS, Intellicure President and CEO, David Walker, used Intellicure data from thousands of patient visits to demonstrate that, if implemented, 99% of wound center visits would be billed at the lowest level of … read more