BERLIN — The Wound Care Center at Atlantic General Hospital (AGH) received the Healogics’ Center of Distinction Award this week as well as the 2012 Robert A. Warriner III, MD Center of Excellence Award Tuesday.
To qualify for the Center of Excellence award, a program must already be a Center of Distinction. This is the fourth consecutive year that the center at AGH has received the Robert A. Warriner III award. Fewer than 10 percent of Healogics’ centers receive the award every year and AGH’s Wound Care Center is the only facility in Maryland to receive the accolade for 2012.
“This award is a very special award because it goes to those people who have provided a consistency of care over time,” said Healogics Senior Vice President of Operations Rick Prall.
To win the Warriner, Prall explained that a care center has to live up to a exceptional standard of quality every single month over the course of the year. Slipping below that quality benchmark for any month during the period would immediately disqualify a center. For the Wound Care Center at AGH to have won the excellence award four years running is incredible, he said.
“There have only been nine centers in the country who’ve ever won it four times with this level of consistency,” Prall noted, adding that only 22 out of 575 Healogics’ centers received it across the country for 2012.
Criteria for the 2012 excellence award were steep. Patient satisfaction with care had to have been at 92 percent or better, which the Wound Care Center topped at 96 percent. Healing rate had to be at or above 91 percent, with the local center again achieving 96 percent. The outlier rate, or the maximum amount of time that care is expected to heal a wound, had to have only 19 percent or fewer patients pass the deadline. The Wound Care Center at AGH only had 7 percent of patients fail to be healed before passing the outlier date.
The final qualification was for the median days to heal, which was 30. The Wound Care Center came in at a median of 27 days.
Wound Care Center Director Geri Rosol attributed much of the center’s success to the partnerships that support it. She credited AGH and Healogics with earning the award as well as local doctors.
“Both entities really work together to give us the support that we need. The physicians in the community are very supportive. They refer to us readily,” she said.
AGH President and CEO Michael Franklin also gave due diligence to the collaborative effort behind the Wound Care Center and highlighted the positive impact the center has on the community.
“What these awards demonstrate really is the success of that type of a partnership, making it happen in a community hospital, and then really making a difference in a community and that’s the most important part of this whole thing,” Franklin said.
More than 6.5 million Americans are affected by chronic wounds. A wound is chronic when it takes weeks, months or even years to fully heal. Some never do. Amputations and even death can occur from chronic wounds.
Since the Wound Care Center opened at AGH in December 2007, more than 2,000 patients have gone through the center with 17,710 patient visits in that period. Wound care services have been provided by the center to 248 patients at the Berlin Nursing and Rehabilitation Center accounting for over 1,500 patient visits. The average number of visits required for a patient to heal a chronic wound at the center is nine.