Wound Care EMR Solution Helps to Efficiently Document Non-healing Wounds

The case for a wound care EMR solution can be made more convincing, considering the exhaustive steps and procedures involved in managing chronic, non-healing wounds. Non-healing wounds are a tough thing to treat since they are, by nature, wounds whose healing is affected by various factors. They require constant observation, documentation and effective management.

Detecting the Reason behind the Failure to Heal

With the skin being the body’s largest organ, it performs vital functions that contribute to the well being of the individual. As you know, these include regulating temperature, immune function, vitamin production, and the all-important sensation. As a result, chronic, non-healing wounds have several underlying reasons behind them and the documentation capabilities of a wound EMR could help.

Treating tough wounds requires the entire patient to be assessed since there could be systemic problems involved that affect the healing of the wound. Non-healing wounds are an indication of systemic pathology. You need to examine whether the patient suffers from:

• Endocrine diseases such as hypothyroidism or diabetes
• Vitamin deficiency and malnutrition-causing GI problems
• Cardiopulmonary conditions such as congestive heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
• Peripheral vascular pathology such as lymphedema, atherosclerotic disease and chronic venous insufficiency
• Hematologic issues such as polycythemia, anemia and myeloproliferative disorders
• Obesity

Any of these could be underlying conditions that make the wound hard to heal. Thorough assessment spanning these departments is essential.

Detailed Assessment of the Full Extent of the Wound

Now we look at focusing on the wound. As you know, an assessment needs to be done of the full extent of the undermined area and the depth and size of the undermining. The appearance of the surface of the wound must also be studied to know whether it is necrotic or viable. The characteristics and amount of the wound exudates, and the condition of the periwound tissues, whether they are atrophic, scarred, pigmented of cellulitic, must be documented as well.

Sufficient oxygenation must be provided to the wound. Insufficient tissue oxygenation could be caused by hypothermia, unrelieved pain or deficit in blood volume.

Ascertaining Wound Infection

Next, the infection must be treated. Here it needs to be ascertained whether the wound is in a state of infection or in a condition of colonization and osteomyelitis. Infection cannot be confirmed by a wound culture alone. Indications of infection are foul-smelling drainage, increased pain, wound bed that bleeds spontaneously, greater wound exudate levels, flimsy and friable tissue, necrosis, surrounding cellulitis, regional lymphadenopathy, crepitus and fasciitis. Of course, fever, malaise and chills are overt signs of infections as are leukocytosis and elevated erythrocyte sedimentation.

Detecting Osteomyelitis

Surgical debridement combined with systemic antibiotic therapy is the treatment for wound infection. Topical antiseptics could actually interfere with the wound healing processes because of the cytotoxicty they pose to the healing cells. Osteomyelitis is sometimes associated with fevers but this normally happens only if the non-healing wound or the draining sinus tract overlies a joint or a bone. Of course, CT scans, MRIs, plain radiographs and radionuclide bone scans also have their part in making out osteomyelitis. Many a time though, imaging evaluation ends up being non-diagnostic. But that should not prevent clinicians from carrying out surgical curettage which is the treatment for osteomyelitis. This must be combined with systemic antibiotics and wound bed.

It is also important to watch out for foreign bodies in the wounds such as fragments of materials used for dressing or suture, or debris from the scene of accident.

Wound Care EMR Solution Helps Improve Outcomes

In all these stages, an efficient wound care EMR solution helps in documenting and managing wound care. It is especially beneficial considering that it has a separate interface for nurses and physicians where they can enter patient data and observations at every stage of the treatment separately in their respective modules. The modules can then be connected, which enables seamless note comparison. This helps ensure effective decision making which improves the level of care and the eventual outcome, which is particularly relevant in the case of treating chronic non-healing wounds.

Wound Wizard is a secure web based application that uses a Software as a Service (SAAS) model, giving you greater flexibility in managing your patient documentation in real time. For more information visit http://www.woundemr.com or call 855-968-6394