OCEAN CITY – Atlantic General Hospital Wound Care Center received several awards last week, including becoming the only Wound Care Center in partnership with Healogics to receive the Robert A. Warriner, III, MD Center of Excellence Award five years in a row.
Atlantic General Hospital (AGH) associates and Board members gathered to witness the award presentation and recognize the AGH Wound Care Center team for the accomplishment last Thursday afternoon when Healogics executives presented several awards to the hospital.
“This is a wonderful occasion for us all to be together because this center [AGH Wound Care Center] has continued to distinguish itself on multiple number of programs that we [Healogics] have in the US, UK and Puerto Rico,” Healogics Senior Vice President Richard Borofski said.
Chronic wounds affect 6.5 million Americans. Sores or wounds are defined as chronic when they do not heal within two months. Some chronic wounds take years to heal or may never do so. Chronic wounds can result in amputations and severe decline in quality of life. At the Wound Care Center at AGH, the goal is to heal a wound in 30 days or less.
AGH forged a partnership with Diversified Clinical Services, one of the leading national wound care center management firms, to open the Wound Care Center in December 2007. Hospital leadership built the center in response to overwhelming community need for quality wound care. The level of care provided has garnered awards every year since the center’s opening.
In 2012, Diversified Clinical Services merged with Healogics to form the world’s largest wound care management firm. Healogics now helps health care organizations with the management of 532 wound care centers across the U.S.
Since the Wound Care Center opened, more than 2,500 patients have been provided specialized treatment, often preventing amputations and helping them return to active lives. The average number of visits for a patient to be healed is nine visits.
Currently, the Wound Care Center at AGH is able to heal more than 96 percent of patient wounds, an achievement that has exceeded national benchmarks and been applauded by Healogics, which manages the center.
This year the Wound Care Center will receive the Center of the Year Award for the Atlantic Region. Only seven Healogics centers are selected from the more than 500 Healogics centers nationwide to receive this award. The Center of the Year Award has the highest healing outcomes and highest patient satisfaction rates in its region. There are 94 centers in the Atlantic Zone.
“Healogics is mapped out into seven zones, and for each zone a center is selected as the best in the zone clinically, operationally and financially,” Healogics Area Vice President Adrienne Abner said. “In order for the center to be number one out of almost 100 centers, it means that your executive team is very much involved and very much supportive of the center.”
This makes the fifth consecutive year the AGH Wound Care Center has also been awarded the Robert A. Warriner, III, MD Center of Excellence Award. The Wound Care Center has also received the Robert A. Warriner, III, MD Center of Excellence Award from Healogics.
“For the last five years this center has exceeded every target every year, and has broken a record for the company. This is the one center who has received this many Robert A. Warriner awards. That says something about this team, about this hospital and about this administration. It is not just something that happens. You have to work at it day in and day out,” Abner said.
Finally, Healogics bestowed its Center of Distinction Award to AGH for its healing rate and high level of patient satisfaction, among other measures, each year since 2009.
“Healogics Center of Distinction presented to AGH Wound Care Center in recognition of excellent healing outcomes, high patient satisfaction rate and outstanding clinical performance,” Abner said.
AGH CEO Michael Franklin concluded the ceremony by looking to the partnership between AGH Wound Care Center and Healogics as an example of what all health care should become in the future.
“We create best practice by doing best practice and learning from it and then care just gets better. We make care predictable where the patient knows what to expect, we know what to expect, and the right and left hand know what each other are doing. If we can take that and put it in everything else that we do, healthcare would be what we want,” Franklin said.