In the 1990s, before the surgical dressing policy, patients used to come in with paper towels and underwear on their wounds because it was so hard to get dressings. I am seeing this again. It reminds me of the 1990s. Why are we moving backwards when it comes to dressings for outpatients?
Here are the reasons I have identified so far: 1) as a result of the ironically named “Affordable Care Act”, private patients now have HUGE deductibles so they feel that they are paying cash for everything and they can’t afford several hundred dollars for dressings from a DME, 2) some of the Medicare “replacement plans” run by private insurers in my area are using a particular durable medical equipment device company (DME) that is NOTORIOUS for taking weeks to get a patient the dressings I order and in the meantime the patient has no supplies, and 3) Medicare has allocated entire categories of dressing to the “non-paid” category like nearly all the honey based dressings
Dr. Fife is a world renowned wound care physician dedicated to improving patient outcomes through quality driven care. Please visit my blog at CarolineFifeMD.com and my Youtube channel at https://www.youtube.com/c/carolinefifemd/videos
