Empowered Patient Podcast Urging Medicare to Maintain Coverage of Skin Substitutes for Chronic Wound Care Treatments with Bill Padula and Dr. David Armstrong University of Southern California
Bill Padula, PhD, Assistant Professor of Pharmaceutical and Health Economics, and Dr. David Armstrong, professor of surgery and Neurological surgery, are both at the University of Southern California and are concerned about wound care and the impact of potential changes in Medicare reimbursement of skin substitutes. They discuss the importance of skin substitutes in chronic wound care and their effectiveness in reducing amputations and hospital readmissions. With current advancements in wound care, there is an emphasis on the need for education and advocacy to ensure that Medicare understands the value of skin substitutes and their potential for improving patient outcomes.
David explains, "The skin substitutes we are talking about have been really helpful over the past, maybe at least the last decade, maybe even the last two decades, and especially over the last few years. We’ve seen now in some studies from our group and others that we can not only reduce amputation, but we can also reduce hospital admission and emergency department admission for these patients. So it’s a really exciting time. And so that’s on the positive end. On the not so positive end is that there have been some changes, and I’m sure Dr. Padula can talk about this. That may limit our access to it as clinicians, which is concerning certainly for the patients that I’m having right across the hallway."
Bill elaborates, "Up until recently, Medicare hasn’t put a lot of governance on reimbursement for skin substitutes, and physicians have been using them autonomously with the patient to treat non-healing chronic wounds. We see from the data that these skin substitutes work best when applied on a patient every one to seven days in a wound clinic, like what David Armstrong runs here at the University of Southern California. Medicare wants to change the reimbursement pattern and reduce reimbursement so that it would be impossible to get reimbursed for more than ten applications of a skin substitute in twelve weeks. So, that reimbursement system makes it impossible for providers and patients to follow parameters for use and improve the likelihood of healing a chronic wound."
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