by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Jul 22, 2022 | Cellular / Tissue-Based Products, Fight the Good Fight, Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy
I will probably get a lot of unhappy messages about this post, but given the sweeping changes that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has proposed for cellular and/or tissue-based products (CTPs), it might be time to “say the quiet part out loud.”...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Jul 21, 2022 | COVID-19, COVID-19 & HBOT, Fight the Good Fight, Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy
COVID-19 infection can lead to a wide range of persistent physical, neurocognitive, and neuropsychological symptoms. I have seen a lot of patients (and a few friends) suffer from “long haul COVID,” and personally, the possibility of living with long term cognitive...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Jul 20, 2022 | Don't Miss This, Fight the Good Fight, Lymphatic Imaging & Lymphedema
For many years I was the director of a very large lymphedema clinic at the Texas Medical Center. I worked with 6 fabulous manual lymphatic drainage (MLD) therapists. The therapists and the patients taught me nearly everything I know about lymphedema because for many...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Jul 18, 2022 | Nutrition & Wound Healing
Check out this presentation on my process of screening for malnutrition among patients with chronic wounds, and the additional evidence supporting a nutritional algorithm for outpatient wound centers. I reviewed two case study examples of limb salvage that...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Jul 14, 2022 | Cellular / Tissue-Based Products, Fight the Good Fight, Healthcare Payment Policy
The 2023 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule (CMS-1770-P) went on display late afternoon July 7, 2023. The proposed rule involves sweeping changes to the way that cellular and/or tissue based products for skin wounds (CTPs) are paid for in the physician office setting....
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Jul 13, 2022 | Fight the Good Fight
CMS will be convening its open door forum today at 2 pm and address the Physician Fee Schedule (PFS) proposed rule. This is an opportunity to ask questions and hear also others who ask them. There is a lot in the PFS that could impact the delivery of wound care...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Jun 27, 2022 | COVID-19, COVID-19 Diaries
On March 26th, 2020, I posted the first installment of the COVID Diaries, written by a critical care doctor who was on call in the Intensive Care Unit the weekend that the first desperately sick COVID-19 patients began to show up at her hospital. As the tidal wave of...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Jun 24, 2022 | Fight the Good Fight
“Thank you God for letting me be a doctor,” was the inscription that Dr. Floyd Carey picked for his tombstone. If you have been in wound care or hyperbaric medicine for a while, you might know his daughter, Darlene Carey. Darlene sent me a link to her father’s...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Jun 22, 2022 | Fight the Good Fight, Lymphatic Imaging & Lymphedema
I have known Cam Ayala since he was about 10. He had primary lymphedema and was one of the many “old beyond their years” children I saw while running a large lymphedema clinic at the University of Texas, Houston in the Texas Medical Center. I’m not betraying a...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Jun 20, 2022 | Fight the Good Fight
I have been the clinical editor of Today’s Wound Clinic for more than a decade, and it continues to be the best resource for information about reimbursement, billing and coding relevant to wound management and hyperbaric oxygen therapy. In the past, the Business...
