Open AccessReduction in wound healing times, cost of consumables and number of visits treated through the implementation of an electronic wound care system in rural Australia
Author(s) -
Khalil Hanan,
Cullen Marianne,
Chambers Helen,
Carroll Matthew,
Walker Judi
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
international wound journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.867
H-Index - 63
eISSN - 1742-481X
pISSN - 1742-4801
DOI - 10.1111/iwj.12414
Subject(s) - medicine , wound care , consumables , documentation , health care , wound healing , medical emergency , operations management , intensive care medicine , surgery , marketing , business , computer science , economics , programming language , economic growth
Globally, wound care costs the health care system 2–3% of the total expenditure on health, which equates to several billion dollars annually. To date, there are little data on the cost and healing rates of various wounds. This has been partly because of the difficulty in tracking wound management as the majority of wound care data has been focused on retrospective data from hospitals, general practice clinics and aged care facilities. This study reports on wound healing and cost of wounds collected from a larger project using the mobile wound care (MWC) electronic documentation system, which has been described elsewhere. The study involved 2350 clients from four health service districts in the Gippsland region in rural Australia who received treatments as part of the MWC research project (2010–2012), with a total of 3726 wounds identified (so an average of 1·6 wounds per client). By the end of the data collection period, 81% of these wounds had healed. A significant drop in healing time, cost of consumables and number of visits was found across the 3‐year period.