What you put IN the patient may be as important as what you put ON them
I have been focusing more on nutrition with my patients. Sometimes nutrition is the medicine. This is a wonderful patient over 90 years old who is still driving and mentally alert. He sustained what appeared to be a relatively superficial skin tear in a fall, but despite good wound care, it continued to worsen.
He’s actually gotten worse over 4 weeks. That’s when I decided to pay attention to his nutrition. He has renal insufficiency, so Arginaid is not recommended. I started him on nutritional supplements.
And he was healed in a few weeks, with good wound care and edema management.
You can help patients find the supplements they need for the lowest price, and order them directly to their home at DirectPatient: https://directpatient.com/nutrition
The USWR now has 2 nutritional screening measures which can be reported under MIPS, one that is provider reported, and one that is patient reported. Read more about the measures here: https://uswoundregistry.com/qualitymeasures
To learn more about the role of nutrition and wound healing, join me for a breakfast symposium on Saturday September 9, at the upcoming APWCA meeting in Philadelphia. Evelyn Phillips, Clinical Nutrition Manager and Researcher at Magee Rehabilitation Jefferson Health System in Philadelphia will be giving a talk entitled, “Nutrition Intervention in Wound Management: The Neglected Piece of the 3-Legged Stool.” Afterwards, I will be explain how practitioners can avoid losing 4% of their Medicare Part B payments by performing a Clinical Practice Improvement Activity (IA) focused on nutritional screening of patients with wounds, and prescribing appropriate supplements.
http://www.apwca.org/2017-Overview
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
