By Shelley Ducker, Alliance of Wound Care Stakeholders
Coverage trends indicate that wound patients are increasingly being denied access to important products/services/procedures – or are being limited in receiving them – because of restrictions in payer coverage policies. Many times, restrictions – or utilization parameters – are out of step with clinical guidelines and current clinical practice.
For years, wound care advocates such as the Alliance of Wound Care Stakeholders and its membership of 20+ clinical associations and specialty medical societies have been submitting comment after comment to restrictive payer coverage policies to flag issues, point to supportive evidence and articulate the impacts to patient care. Problematic coverage policies have spanned debridement to surgical dressings to cellular and tissue-based products (CTPs) to negative pressure wound therapy (NPWT) and more.
