Identifying Trends in Wound Care and Healthcare

In this exclusive feature, Today’s Wound Clinic offers a glimpse at some overall healthcare trends that could someday impact the clinical and business side of wound center practice.

Next-Generation Sequencing Test For Wounds and Infections

Officials at Granger Diagnostics, North Chesterfield, VA, a clinical laboratory that creates genetic tests for infectious diseases and cancer, now offers what they describe as the first commercially-available, next-generation sequencing test for wounds and infections. The Wound~Seq molecular diagnostic test ensures discovery of all bacteria, all fungi, all parasites, and select viruses with one swab of the wound or infected area, according to officials.

“We are excited to make available, for the first time, our clinically-significant test that utilizes next-generation sequencing of the skin microbiome,” said David G. Bostwick, MD, chief medical officer at Granger. “Our new, validated test provides significant actionable information that assists physicians in managing infections. Previous studies have shown that wound closure that relies on genetic-assisted testing is much more rapid, decreases pain and suffering, and results in cost savings. The promise of personalized medicine is now fulfilled.”

For more information, visit www.grangerdiagnostics.com/services/wound-seq

Digital Classification System Expected to Foster Value-Based Care

COTA Inc., a healthcare informatics and analytics company based in New York, has reportedly been granted a United States patent for the development of a digital patient classification system that transforms the prognostically significant attributes related to cancer patients into digital code. The COTA Nodal Address (CNA) system precisely categorizes patient factors, type, and stage of cancer and intended therapies to measure treatment outcomes, according to company officials. The CNA also enables the identification of variances in care, provides quality benchmarking, and highlights clear paths for research and discovery.

“COTA’s CNA classification system is a transformative approach to applying ‘big data’ to healthcare,” said Andrew Pecora, MD, FACP, CPE, founder and executive chairman of COTA and chief innovations officer of Hackensack (NJ) University Medical Center.

According to company officials, the classification system provides a better opportunity for providers to reduce treatment variance and helps to identify, reduce, or eliminate wasteful spending. The technology allows clinicians to process all incoming data by extracting key facts and enabling important diagnostic/care decisions to be made in real time. The system is also said to reduce processing requirements and time needed to make real-time monitoring of medical providers’ performance more efficient. With precise predictions of when behavioral variance is likely to occur, the system also assists physicians in accurately interrupting treatment flow to avoid both over- and under-utilization of care, officials said, claiming that the system will soon expand to increase the value of care for all medical conditions. For more information, visit www.oncota.com.

Burn Care Device in Development Sees Positive Test Results

A stem cell therapy for the treatment of burn wounds that’s currently in development has reportedly undergone successful testing. According to officials with RenovaCare Inc., New York, the SkinGun,™ a product that sprays fluids containing a patient’s own stem cells onto burns and wounds for rapid, scar-free healing, has continued to progress through various testing phases. Most recently, positive spray test results show high distribution and concentration patterns as well as an ability to spray powerful, delicate skin stem cells gently to the injured skin. Scientists reported 97.3% cell viability — considered to be essential to regenerating skin for burns, wounds, and cosmetic applications — after product use. Among technical aims during the study was evaluation of several factors important to the regeneration of human skin, including cell yield, viability, metabolic activity, and cell growth, officials said. In these latest tests, scientists repeatedly sprayed fluids at various airflow rates using the SkinGun, resulting in 200-times more droplets than conventional “syringe deposition.” For example, in an 8 cm surface area the product delivered more than 20,000 evenly distributed droplets versus 91 droplets by conventional needle and syringe methods, officials claim. Scientists reportedly evaluated droplet size, distribution, and density alongside spray velocity and fluid viscosity in recent experiments. Additional testing remains ongoing. For more information, visit www.renovacareinc.com

Trends Fact: Web companies are expected to host some 1.2 million “virtual doctor” telemedicine visits this year, up 20% from last year, according to the American Telemedicine Association.

Online Exclusive: Multimedia Center

For a video presentation of the spray-on stem cell therapy performed on an injured state trooper, visit our online multimedia center at www.todayswoundclinic.com/multimedia

Physician Tech Expert Predicts Universal Link With Apple, EHRs

Iltifat Husain, MD, founder and editor in chief of iMedicalApps.com, a leading online publication for medical professionals, patients, and analysts interested in mobile medical technology and healthcare-related apps, believes the healthcare industry will soon start to see electronic health records that feature mobile apps that communicate universally with the iPhone Health App — thereby allowing patients to store updated versions of their medical history on their mobile phones. “If patients go to another hospital or physician, they can then share those same HL7-formatted records, considered to be the universal health-information storage standard, with their new health system’s electronic medical record app — uploading their health record digitally for the health system,” Husain said in a recent report. For more information, visit www.imedicalapps.com/2016/06/apple-ios-10-patient-health-records.

Trends Fact: A new study from the Ponemon Institute on the privacy and security of healthcare data claims 90% of healthcare organizations are suffering from at least one data breach over a two-year period.

CMS Finalizes Rule Giving Providers & Employers Improved Access to Information

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) recently finalized new rules that officials claim will enrich the Qualified Entity Program (QEP) by expanding access to analyses and data to assist providers, employers, and others in making more informed decisions about healthcare delivery and quality improvement. The new rules, as required by the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA), allow organizations approved as qualified entities (QEs) to confidentially share or sell analyses of Medicare and private sector claims data to providers, employers, and other groups who can use the data to support improved care. In addition, QEs may provide or sell claims data to providers and suppliers, such as doctors, nurses, and skilled nursing facilities, among others. The rule also includes strict privacy and security requirements for all entities receiving patient identifiable and beneficiary de-identified analyses or data, as well as expanded annual reporting requirements. For example, if entities receive patient identifiable data or analyses, they must use protections that are at least as stringent as what is required of covered entities and their business associates for protected health information (PHI) under HIPAA privacy and security rules.

“Increasing access to analyses and data that include Medicare data will make it easier for stakeholders throughout the healthcare system to make smarter and more informed healthcare decisions,” said CMS chief data officer Niall Brennan.

The QEP is authorized by Section 10332 of the Affordable Care Act and allows organizations that meet certain qualifications to access patient-protected Medicare data to produce public reports. QEs must combine the Medicare data with other claims data (eg, private payer data) to produce quality reports that are representative of how providers and suppliers are performing across multiple payers, for example Medicare, Medicaid, or various commercial payers. The final rule contains few changes from the proposed rule. Future rulemaking is anticipated to expand the data available to qualified entities to include standardized extracts of Medicaid data. The final rule is on display at the Office of the Federal Register at www.federalregister.gov