NALTH 2024 Spring Clinical Conference in Nashville, TN

WoundCentrics Stuart Oertli, COO, Dr. Marcus Gitterle, CMO and Ken Rideout, CDO  attend the 2024 Spring Clinical Conference for NALTH in Nashville, TN 

WoundCentrics attended the NALTH Spring 2024 LTACH (Long Term Acute Care Hospital) Clinical Education Conference + Annual Member Meeting. The Clinical Conference that was held at Westin Hotel in Nashville Tennessee, March 27 –29, 2024. 

WoundCentrics is an Advocate Member of NALTH and supports the annual meeting by providing a marketing booth at the NALTH Conference for the ninth consecutive year. The NALTH Clinical Conference focused on the clinical issues specific to Long-Term Acute Care Hospitals. 

“WoundCentrics proudly supports the NALTH Mission and its member hospitals to ensure the stability of the Long-Term Acute Care Hospitals and the evolving clinical advances in healthcare that benefits LTACH patients and communities,” said Ken Rideout, Chief Development Officer. “We are pleased to participate and support the Clinical Conference in Nashville,” Rideout stated. 

More about WoundCentrics:  WoundCentrics provides fully aligned and integrated wound care programs which complement the LTACH model: improving clinical outcomes, facilitating timely discharges, preventing re-admissions, containing costs, and optimizing revenue opportunities. Because our programs are system-based with daily provider rounds and integrated case management, shorter stay IPPS admissions and discharges can be reliably managed. Ad-hoc wound programs without fully aligned providers cannot reliably achieve profitable shorter stay admissions nor maximize case mix opportunity for LTAC compliance admissions. Our program prevents cherry-picking cases by non-aligned providers, sharply reduces outmigration due to wound-related complications as well as transfers to STACH facilities for surgical debridement. 

Texas Cardiovascular Institute announces the addition of Jonathan Bonilla, M.D. Cardiologist

Texas Cardiovascular Institute is pleased to announce that Dr. Jonathan Bonilla, MD, an experienced, double-boarded Cardiologist and Interventional Cardiologist, has joined the Institute to provide Cardiology care in the Seguin and San Antonio, Texas clinics.  

“We are extremely pleased to have Dr. Bonilla join us and provide Cardiology care to the patients we serve in our Cardiovascular clinics as we continue to grow our services in the region,” stated Stuart Oertli, Chief Operating Officer of the Texas Cardiovascular Institute. 

Dr. Bonilla specializes in diagnosing, monitoring, and treating diseases or conditions of the heart, blood vessels, and cardiovascular system. These conditions include heart attacks, heart murmurs, coronary artery disease, cardiac valvular conditions, abnormal heart rhythms, peripheral vascular disease, high cholesterol, and hypertension.  Dr. Bonilla also practices preventative medicine, helping patients maintain a heart-healthy life. 

“I am pleased that Dr. Bonilla has joined TCVI to assist our cardiovascular patients.  Dr. Bonilla brings his 10+ years of Cardiology experience to TCVI and will provide quality heart and vascular care to our patients,” stated Dr. Yoho, Chief Medical Officer for TCVI. 

Dr. Jonathan Bonilla earned a Doctor of Medicine degree from the Universidad Central del Caribe School of Medicine in Puerto Rico. He then completed an Internal Medicine Internship and Residency at Ochsner Medical Center. Dr Bonilla completed a Cardiology fellowship and an Interventional Cardiology Subspecialty Fellowship at Ochsner Medical Center.  

Dr Bonilla is bilingual and fluent in both English and Spanish. He is board-certified in Cardiology and Interventional Cardiology.  

To learn more about the Texas Cardiovascular Institute in Texas, visit the website at texascardiacandvascular.com

Wound Care University Announces Partnership with the ABWM for Wound Care Education

Wound Care University is pleased to announce a partnership with the ABWM Foundation for wound care education courses for clinicians. 

Wound Care University, located in New Braunfels, Texas, offers a Wound Care Certification Preparatory Course designed to encompass the primary elements of advanced wound care, including etiologies, therapies, and clinical wound care in all clinical settings.  

The ABWM Foundation has reviewed the 40-hour, on-demand Certification Prep Course for wound care.   This recommendation is only the second course ever by ABWM Foundation. This recognition from the ABWM Foundation demonstrates the quality and value of the Wound Care University educational program.  

“We are dedicated to providing our students with the best educational experience, regardless of their professional goals,” stated Sara Holtman, RN, BSN, MHA, CWS, and Director of Education for Wound Care University. “Furthermore, the fact that our wound care course faculty members are all ABWM-certified and actively practicing in the field adds real-world credibility to the wound care course,” Holtman continued. “Our commitment to continuous improvement for patient care is our focus, and our goal is for our students to have the best educational experience that will open opportunities for them as they advance their knowledge base and careers,” said Sara Holtman.  

Marcus Gitterle, MD, a Wound Care University faculty member and subject matter expert, stated, “Recognition by ABWM is testimony to a lot of hard work by the growing team at WoundCare University, but moreover, it is recognition of Sara’s leadership and vision.” 

WoundCentrics opens the WoundCentrics Wound Care & Hyperbaric Center in Lafayette, Louisiana

WoundCentrics, a full-service advanced wound care company, has announced the management of the former Louisiana Limb Salvage Wound Care & Hyperbaric Center in Lafayette, Louisiana. 

The WoundCentrics wound clinic offers state-of-the-art wound care, providing advanced technologies and treatments, including advanced wound care, vascular assessments, and hyperbaric oxygen therapy.  

Patients in the area who suffer from chronic, non-healing wounds due to diabetes, vascular issues, infection, pressure, and other health-related problems can be treated at the clinic located at 901 Wilson, Suite D, in the Oil Center in Lafayette.  

The WoundCentrics Wound Care & Hyperbaric Center is staffed with wound care trained providers and nursing staff. The wound center staff will coordinate care plans with the patient’s current referring providers and care team and keep the patient’s care team informed at every step of treatment. 

Typical wounds seen in the wound center include diabetic ulcers, vascular wounds, arterial wounds, pressure wounds, and infected wounds.  Once a diagnosis is identified in the patients, various treatments are prescribed, including sharp debridement, compression, off-loading, dressings, skin substitutes, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, and vascular studies. 

 “We are pleased to manage the wound and hyperbaric oxygen program at the WoundCentrics Wound Care Center in Lafayette,” said Ben Simpson, VP of Ambulatory Services for WoundCentrics. “Our goal is to help heal patients with chronic, difficult wounds and improve patient lives.” 

Located at 901 Wilson Street, Suite D in Lafayette, the Clinic is open Monday through Friday, 8 am to 4 pm. To learn more about WoundCentrics, visit the website at www.woundcentrics.com.

WoundCentrics & Wound Care University Faculty Members to Present at Wild On Wounds Conference (WOW) in Hollywood, Florida this Fall

Marcus Gitterle, M.D., FACCWS, Chief Medical Officer for WoundCentrics, LLC, and Sara Holtman, RN, BSN, MHA, CWS, WCC, Director of Clinical Education for WoundCentrics and Director of Wound Care University, will be presenting at the Wild On Wounds national conference in Hollywood, Florida September 13 – 16, 2023. 

According to Wild On Wounds (WOW), the annual conference is the third largest wound care conference nationally and is focused on empowering the healthcare workforce with impactful wound care education created by and for clinicians.   

WOW attendees come from all over the U.S. to network and participate in the hands-on workshops and to learn new, advanced wound care treatments and technologies to better care for patients. 

Dr. Gitterle and Sara Holtman will present “Nutrition is the Key,” a nutrition and wound healing lecture on Saturday, September 16th. “We are looking forward to contributing to Wild on Wounds, and especially on this key topic,” stated Dr.Gitterle. 

” I am honored to speak at the WOW conference with some of the best wound care clinicians in the industry,” Holtman said.  “Dr. Gitterle and I have collaborated for many years to bring our education department to where it is today, and to be recognized like this is a true honor.  I look forward to continuing to educate the healthcare community on best and current wound care practices,” Holtman stated. 

WoundCentrics announces expansion of Clinical Research Program with two New Clinical Trials

WoundCentrics, LLC, a comprehensive wound care company based in New Braunfels, Texas, has announced participation in 2 clinical trials at several of their Texas clinical sites. “As we have grown and our patient volumes and clinical research capabilities grew, we recognized the need to contribute to the body of evidence in wound care in order to better care for those we serve,” stated Marcus Gitterle, MD, WoundCentrics’ Chief Medical Officer. In making the commitment, the company hired a clinical research coordinator and invested in the infrastructure required to successfully manage the complexities of producing meaningful results from its work. 

The first study, sponsored by Engineered Tissue Solutions (ETS), an emerging wound care device company that has developed an innovative bioactive glass technology that reduces healing time, minimizes treatment costs, and improves patient outcomes. This Phase Three Clinical Trial, which ETS has funded, utilizes ETS’ Mirragen Engineered Dermal Substitute for the treatment of Diabetic Foot Ulceration.  WoundCentrics will support as a clinical trial site and has already begun enrolling patients in Corpus Christi, Texas. 

Additionally, WoundCentrics is expected to serve as a primary site in a clinical trial sponsored by Estar Technologies, LTD, which will utilize their innovative Platelet Rich Fibrin product in the treatment of Diabetic Foot Ulcers. The clinical trial is currently awaiting final IRB approval and is expected to begin later this summer in multiple WoundCentrics locations in Texas. 

While funded studies enable broader research objectives, WoundCentrics has also undertaken several retrospective studies which are ongoing in the areas of Chronic DVT and venous ulcer disease, as well as revascularization outcomes in patients recommended for amputation due to having been deemed to have “no other options.” 

It is a privilege to be able to help advance the state of the art in Wound Care and to be able to offer leading-edge therapies to our patients. I’m proud of our team for their outstanding contributions in the area of clinical research,” remarked Dr. Gitterle.  

Stuart Oertli, WoundCentrics’ Chief Operating Officer, closed by saying, “It is our goal to continue to grow our research capabilities, engage in new studies regularly and collaborate with our teams and sponsors to publish the findings our research is able to generate. Under the guidance of Dr. Gitterle and with the support of our Vice President of Ambulatory Services, Ben Simpson, we have already seen early success both for our patients and our research partners.” 

WoundCentrics to expand relationship with Louisiana Home care with new agreements to provide its specialized wound care program in Alexandria and Lacombe, Louisiana and Hot Springs, Arkansas

WoundCentrics recently signed three new agreements to provide it’s specialized wound care services for the Long Term Acute Care Hospitals operated by Louisiana Home Care (LHC) based in Lafayette, Louisiana.  This announcement expands on the existing relationship between the two companies which as been in place since WoundCentrics began providing services at Ochsner Extended Care Hospital in New Orleans in 2020. 

Services began at Northshore Extended Care Hospital in Lacombe, Louisiana in March 2023 and at Christus Dubuis Hospital in Alexandria, Louisiana in April 2023. It is anticipated that the program at Arkansas Extended Care Hospital in Hot Springs, Arkansas will begin in May 2023. will be adding a WoundCentrics wound care specialist provider to coordinated care with the hospital staff to deliver advanced wound care services to patients in the LHC Hospitals. 

“ We are excited to extend our advanced wound care services to patients in these new LHC  locations.  LHC has been a great partner in New Orleans and that program has truly made a difference for the patients receiving care there. Our goal is to provide quality, compassionate wound care services with the clinical and administrative support that is not often found when ‘me too’ services are offered by providers who don’t specialize in advanced wound care,”  stated Stuart Oertli, Chief Operating Officer for WoundCentrics.  

WoundCentrics is located in New Braunfels, Texas and operates 14 wound centers and provides advanced wound care services in more than 100 inpatient facilities across 12 states with a goal of providing advanced wound care, amputation prevention and vascular services to the communities we serve.  

Christus Santa Rosa Medical Center San Antonio Celebrates Zero Reportable Wound Events with WoundCentrics Inpatient Wound Care Service

Christus Santa Rosa San Antonio Medical Center Inpatient Wound Service Team celebrates Zero Reportables

Christus Santa Rosa Medical Center San Antonio and WoundCentrics had a hospital sponsored celebration event on February 10th to highlight a team achievement of zero reportable wound care events, hospital-acquired pressure injuries (HAPIs) for over 100 days. Christus has contracted WoundCentrics, a wound care management company, to oversee the inpatient skin and wound care program in partnership with the hospital’s staff.  

Since the full implementation of the WoundCentrics specialist nursing and provider programs, the hospital’s reportable events, Stage III, Stage IV, and Unstageable pressure ulcers, have fallen to zero reportable events to the controlling agencies that mandate reporting such events. Both the Christus clinical team and the WoundCentrics team share in the success of the Inpatient wound care service delivery of these outstanding results as it takes coordinated efforts to provide these outcomes. 

Christus Santa Rosa San Antonio staff helps us celebrate.

Kimberly A. Ford, MBA-HM, BSN, RN, Director of Operations for Inpatient Services for WoundCentrics explained, “Although the concept of our program is built on the foundation of Best Practices for Pressure Injury Prevention and advanced wound care, the implementation and ongoing oversight with the associated culture shifts is where we can work with our hospital partners and create improved outcomes. This makes a difference not only to the care that is provided, but it has an enormous effect on Quality and Patient Safety scores and significant financial benefits by decreasing associated costs by up to 75%. ““The collaborative and proactive support provided by our inpatient program has also been shown to increase satisfaction of the hospital team members, nursing and other ancillary team members, and in turn affects retention. Our experience with wound prevention, early identification, timely interventions and our education program are delivering results at the bedside,” Ford said.  

For background, an article published in WoundScource on January 31, 2023, stated: 

“The National Quality Forum (NQF) introduced the term never event in the early 2000s, and it refers to a preventable error that may represent fundamental issues with the quality or safety of care within a medical setting.1 This wording was initially selected because these events are situations that should never happen to any patient, such as surgery to the wrong leg or leaving a sponge in a patient after surgery.2 In recent years, the NQF has adopted the term serious reportable events (SREs), but in many instances, the term never event is still used.” 

Never Events in Wound Care: In wound care, the concept of a never event is complicated. In 2008, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released a list of facility never events that are not covered under Medicare. Under that list were hospital-acquired stage 3 and 4 pressure injuries, along with unstageable pressure injuries. Several other hospital-acquired conditions are listed, including burns and certain surgical site infections. 

For those working in understaffed facilities or with patient populations at a higher risk of such injury, the inclusion of these conditions as never events may have profound consequences. In certain cases, wound care professionals who provide the standard of care or even care that exceeds expectations may receive repercussions when a patient develops a pressure injury. In addition to Medicare not providing coverage for these injuries, clinicians could face legal action from the patient or their family. 

WoundCentrics Inpatient Wound Care Service is designed and customized to lead the hospital’s wound care program to provide advanced wound care services that align with the hospital nursing and clinical teams. The program reduces risk, reduces harm events, improves documentation and adherence to standard of care for a first line of defense. 

Marcus Gitterle, MD, Chief Medical Officer and co-founder of WoundCentrics said, “I am proud of our team, for helping the Christus Santa Rosa system to achieve such an outstanding level of patient safety. Pressure Injury prevention requires a deeply collaborative culture, and excellent communication, in order to be sustainable. Our “Measurvention” approach is, I feel the only reliable method for prospective prevention of these iatrogenic events, and these results affirm that.” 

Veteran Healthcare Executive Shawn Strash joins WoundCentrics

Shawn Strash, MHA, MBA, CHC, FACHE

Shawn Strash, FACHE, has joined the WoundCentrics management team as Vice-President of Growth and Strategy. In this new role, Shawn will develop  our first Ambulatory Surgery Center, San Antonio Surgery Center of Excellence while promoting our expanded limb preservation efforts through our existing and new Office Based Cath Labs and Cardiovascular Clinics in the WoundCentrics portfolio of companies. 

Shawn is a seasoned healthcare executive with more than 30 years in the ASC/ Hospital industry. He has specialized primarily in start-ups, turn-around opportunities, hospital and ASC mergers/acquisitions and hospital management. 

Shawn’s background includes leadership of 21 hospitals, 18 as CEO, as well as operational responsibility for 75 ASCs. His experience and leadership will focus on the San Antonio Surgery Center of Excellence initially, that is expected to begin accepting patients in March 2023. 

As CEO of Landmark Hospital in Naples, Florida, he was hired to turn the company around and add additional service lines.  The revenue streams he added to Landmark included surgery, destination medicine, inpatient rehabilitation and partnering with WoundCentrics for an inpatient wound care programs across their seven hospitals.  It was during his time in Naples, Florida that Shawn worked with WoundCentrics that would lead to his joining the company recently. 

Shawn has extensive ASC experience as  CEO of Arise Healthcare systems in Austin, Texas, a company that now develops and manages outpatient base cath labs.  He also served s as Senior Vice President  of Corporate Services and Chief Compliance Officer for AMSURG, a national ASC company.  

”We are truly excited to have someone with Shawn’s background and experience join our team. His work in recent years with payers and as a member of Health Rosetta exemplify the kind of partnerships we hope to make between patients, payers and providers to benefit those we serve.” 

New Cardiovascular and Wound Care Center to Open in Seguin, TX

WoundCentrics and Texas Cardiac and Vascular Institute (TCVI) have announced a new Cardiovascular and Advanced Wound Care Center in Seguin, Texas to provide cardiology, minimally invasive limb preservation procedures and advanced wound care to the community. The new clinic will began providing cardiology services in August 2022, will begin offering endovascular services in September 2022 and will begin advanced wound care services on October 3rd, 2022. 

WoundCentrics and TCVI are collaborating to provide advanced modalities for wound care and endovascular treatment to patients with non-healing wounds including diabetic foot ulcers, venous and arterial leg ulcers, infected wounds, radiated tissue injury and surgical wounds with complications. Our wound centers also treat conditions that can lead to wounds like arterial/venous insufficiency and collaborate with our vascular specialists to treat peripheral arterial/venous disease and critical limb ischemia. 

“Our staff and providers are wound care specialists trained in the latest techniques for evaluation and management of acute and chronic wounds, vascular evaluation and management of the underlying medical conditions that  require care coordination with other medical professionals and/or allied health specialists,” stated Ben Simpson, WoundCentrics Vice President of Operations. 

“Co-locating WoundCentrics’ wound care clinic with TCVI has proven incredibly successful at improving patient outcomes and preventing amputations for those with chronic wounds or critical limb ischemia in our Corpus Christi location. Being based here in South Central Texas, we are excited to be able to offer those services to the local community here in Seguin,” relayed Stuart Oertli, WoundCentrics Chief Operating Officer.  

WoundCentrics new wound center will offer advanced therapies including engineered dermal substitutes, negative pressure therapy, MIST therapy, specialty dressings, compression dressings, off-loading and sharp debridement. TCVI will perform both cardiology and vascular services including medication management, diagnostic testing and will provide endovascular intervention including angiography/venography, atherectomy, arterial/venous stenting, and superficial vein ablation.  

The new WoundCentrics and TCVI clinic is located at 1255 Ashby St. Building A, in Seguin, Texas. The clinic will be open daily, Monday through Friday, 9am to 4pm, to see patients and make new and follow-up appointments.  

For an appointment call 832-590-8049 or visit our website at:  www.woundcentrics.com