Tissue Analytics Webinar Highlights Strategies to Improve Hospital Wound Care

PITTSBURGH, July 1, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- More than 8.5 million people in the U.S. today are living with chronic wounds at a cost to the U.S. healthcare system of $30 billion annually. Tissue Analytics, a Net Health company, recently presented a webinar to provide insights and solutions to the challenges wound care presents for the nation's hospitals.

Titled "Top Digital Techniques to Reduce Hospital-Acquired Pressure Injuries," the webinar was given by noted industry expert Kara Couch, MS, CRNP, CWCN-AP, CHWS, director of Inpatient Wound Care and Associate Research Professor of Surgery at the School of Medicine and Health Sciences at George Washington University.

A hospital-acquired pressure injury (HAPI) is a localized injury to the skin or underlying tissue that may develop in some higher-risk patients during a hospital stay. Finding ways to manage wound care is increasingly important to hospitals seeking to care for patients, maximize reimbursement and meet outcomes and quality rating mandates. HAPIs are categorized as "never events" under the CMS Hospital Acquired Condition (HAC) program. The direct and indirect costs of HAPIs are at least $50,000 per incident. Additionally, because such wounds aren't reimbursed by CMS, and are penalized, a 300-bed hospital could lose $2 million annually if wounds aren't prevented and managed.

In the webinar, Couch explored some of the obstacles hospitals grapple with when trying to manage HAPIs, including workflow issues, electronic health record (EHR) inefficiencies, documentation and how to leverage EHR data to improve outcomes.

"EHRs don't always play nicely in the sandbox, especially if there are different systems for inpatient, outpatient and clinics," said Couch. "Busy providers have to toggle back and forth on systems that don't speak the same language wasting already valuable time and leading to missed opportunities for improving outcomes and managing costs. Plus, despite its importance, most nursing and medical schools don't teach wound care, which again, hurts our ability to improve care and the patient experience."

Couch noted that digital technology, such as the capabilities  pioneered by Tissue Analytics, was key to meeting those challenges. Tissue Analytics uses HIPAA compliant and secure smartphone technology to create a sophisticated imaging and diagnostic platform for chronic wounds. The platform, which is integrated with all the major EHR vendors, including Cerner, Epic, AllScripts and AthenaHealth, improves documentation, creates more consistency in diagnosis and treatment, enables greater interoperability among disparate systems within the health system, and decreases communication errors between providers while streamlining workflow.

"Hospitals need to find better ways to prevent wounds as well as diagnose and treat them," said Kevin Keenahan, Cofounder of Tissue Analytics and the new Senior Vice President of Business Development for Net Health. "One way we can do that is to give clinicians sophisticated yet reliable and easy-to-use technology that will get people away from computers and back to looking at patients." 

To download the free webinar, visit https://go.nethealth.com/karacouchondemand. For more information on Tissue Analytics, visit www.tissue-analytics.com.

About Net Health
Net Health provides cloud-based software for specialty medical providers across the continuum of healthcare – from hospital to home. Net Health's interoperable EHRs deliver end-to-end solutions that ensure compliance, improve outcomes, empower providers and inspire care. The company serves over 14,000 facilities, including 98 percent of the largest hospital chains, two-thirds of skilled nursing facilities and many leading hospice organizations and private practices. Net Health is a portfolio company of The Carlyle Group, Level Equity and Silversmith Capital Partners. www.nethealth.com 

About Tissue Analytics
Tissue Analytics, Inc. develops artificial intelligence-powered software solutions that serve clinicians, industry, and research stakeholders in various therapy areas. The platform uses best-in-class machine learning and computer vision to optimize documentation workflows and improve the quality of electronic medical records (EMR) data. Tissue Analytics, Inc. deploys its wound management software via industry-leading SMART on FHIR integrations with Epic, Cerner, Allscripts, and others. Tissue Analytics, Inc. was incorporated in 2014 and is based in Baltimore, Maryland, with a satellite office in Kansas City, Missouri.

SOURCE Net Health Systems, Inc.

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