by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Oct 8, 2019 | Healthcare Payment Policy, Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy
Guest blog post by Dick Clarke of National Baromedical Services On August 1 of this year, a bill entitled the “North Carolina Veterans Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Treatment and Recovery Act” (House Bill 50 / SL 2019-175)...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Oct 7, 2019 | Healthcare Payment Policy, Pressure Cooker: Rethinking Pressure Ulcers
WPS Government Health Administrators (GHA) is a Medicare Administrative Contractor (MAC) and its Local Coverage Determination (LCD) on Wound Care became effective on April 16, 2018. The U.S. states impacted by the WPS LCD on Wound Care are: Jurisdiction 5 (J5) –...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Oct 4, 2019 | Healthcare Payment Policy
On Thursday, President Trump signed an executive order to equalize payment among sites of service. The order says that HHS should make sure Medicare pay and policies “encourage competition and a diversity of sites for patients to access care,” and directs CMS to look...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Oct 2, 2019 | Fight the Good Fight
Dear Diary, I AM SO SPECIAL! Today I was treated with another new “Cellular and/or tissue based product!” Sometimes it’s big enough to be cut and put on all of us, and sometimes it’s so small that only one of us can get the special treatment. I always say, “PICK ME!...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Sep 30, 2019 | Healthcare Payment Policy, Quality Payment Program, US Wound Registry
Do you still have the photos of the first patient you treated with the VAC? Here are the 1997 photos of my first VAC patient, only 2 years after the device was cleared by the FDA. I know the photo quality is terrible – they were originally Polaroids! My point is that...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Sep 26, 2019 | Miscellaneous Musings
I recently spoke at a conference where an artist depicted each speaker’s presentation visually. This is how he interpreted my rapid fire, “Current state of wound care in 15 minutes.” Maybe later I’ll post some of the slides for comparison. In the meantime, this...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Sep 25, 2019 | Fight the Good Fight, Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy
Have you ever seen an oxygen toxicity seizure? You can see one on this You Tube, produced by the U.S. Navy many years ago. Here are the verbatim comments of hyperbaric technicians (from the Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy Registry) who observed oxygen seizures during...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Sep 24, 2019 | Do the Right Thing: Thoughts on Quality
Recently as part of a post marketing surveillance project for a specific dressing product, I had to record the dressings used on a wound over time. I’ve provided just a little example of what I found. This is just the diary of one wound, and doesn’t include all of the...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Sep 19, 2019 | Healthcare Payment Policy
I have been using DNA assay of wounds for a decade, but am still trying to figure out how best to employ this technology. Here’s an example of why it is needed at times: This is a frail lady who is devoted to her dogs. Her wound had been making progress at a glacial...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Sep 18, 2019 | Cellular / Tissue-Based Products, Uncategorized
An increasing percentage of my wound center patients have Medicare Advantage plans offered by private payers. As I’ve discussed on previous blogs, it’s getting very hard to use cellular and/or tissue-based products (CTPs) on chronic wound patients with Medicare...
