by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Mar 27, 2019 | Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care, Quality Payment Program
A recent column in Med Page Today by David Nash draws attention to the frustrating issue of the quality measure development process (as well as its funding model). If any wound care practitioner has looked at their Quality and Resource Use Report (QRUR), you might...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Mar 25, 2019 | Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care
Mysterious Sepsis in a Dialysis Patient I have been taking care of a young woman with Type 1 diabetes who lost her kidney transplant about a year ago. She suffers from all the complications of diabetes, and is on home peritoneal dialysis. When I first saw her, she had...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Mar 14, 2019 | Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care
I have the nurses leave the dressing they just removed on a chuck or on top of the trash so that I can look at it. It is amazing what you can learn from a discarded wound dressing. I’ve blogged previously about the fact that frankly bloody drainage is increasingly...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Mar 11, 2019 | Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care
84 year old man with a history of lymphoma but is purportedly disease free. Severe peripheral edema began 2 years ago. He says he developed this very large ulcer after minor trauma. His skin perfusion pressure is normal (68 mmHg), he has a biphasic PVR and strong DP...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Mar 11, 2019 | Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care
This is a retired surgeon with venous insufficiency. Whenever his compression garments become old, his leg swelling worsens and an old surgical scar on the lateral leg re-opens. Lymphatic fluid begins draining out of the PERI-WOUND area after a cleaning the area...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Mar 7, 2019 | Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care
Poison Ivy – treated with topical and systemic steroids… and a doctor’s excuse for hiring a yard crew.
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Mar 5, 2019 | Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care
Allow my assistant to demonstrate the ease with which they may be applied….so why don’t more people who treat venous patients know about this option? This is not a long term solution for edema.
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Mar 4, 2019 | Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care, Quality Payment Program
In 2013 we were winding down the analysis needed to create the Wound Healing Index (WHI), a mathematical model to stratify wounds by their likelihood of healing. The goal was to enable the reporting of honest healing rates. Susan Horn and I have published a lot about...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Jan 31, 2019 | Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care
I handled a situation with a patient poorly a few months ago, and it shook me up so much I asked Jay Shah to write an article about the subject for Today’s Wound Clinic. I’d love some feedback about the topic, either through my blog or TWC. Here’s what happened. I...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Jan 28, 2019 | Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care, Pressure Cooker: Rethinking Pressure Ulcers
Since the pressure ulcer staging system is based on the tissue you can visualize, we get caught up in a bizarre logic. It ought to be possible to describe the steps a wound goes through to get to a stage 4 pressure ulcer. But you can’t, because an ulcer doesn’t become...
