Payers' perspectives on wound care coverage policy determination: what we know and ways to move forward.

Many coverage challenges in wound care stem from a lack of shared clarity among researchers, manufacturers, payers, and regulators about the clinical evidence payers need to make positive coverage determinations. The Alliance of Wound Care Stakeholders, a multidisciplinary trade association, convened its Wound Care Evidence Summit in May 2022 to explore this issue and identify shared challenges and solutions with a diverse range of policymakers, payers, and researchers. This article focuses on payers' clinical evidence requirements and the processes used when making coverage determinations, as discussed at the Summit.

Retrospective analysis of the effect of vaporous hyperoxia therapy as an adjunct to standard wound care in chronic wounds.

Background: Considering the rising incidence and cost associated with chronic wounds, further investigation of safe and effective treatments is needed.

Objective: To conduct a retrospective analysis of patients with chronic wounds in order to evaluate the healing effect of vaporous hyperoxia therapy (VHT) used adjunctively with standard wound care.

Materials And Methods: The data of patients with chronic wounds (≥4 weeks' duration) who received commercial treatment with VHT between February 28, 2020, and August 30, 2022, were reviewed.

Improving Early Prediction of Abnormal Recovery after Appendectomy in Children using Real-world Data from Wearables.

Postoperative complications are primary concerns during early recovery from pediatric appendectomy. Identifying complications or symptoms of abnormal recovery typically relies on intermittent and subjective assessments from children and their caregivers, which may result in delayed diagnosis. Wearable devices can capture continuous and objective health measurements, which can be mined for early biomarkers of complications or symptoms using machine learning models.

A simple and practical approach to improving the cost effectiveness of surgical inventory management.

Operating room inventories typically involve hundreds of surgical items. Managers require very high service levels since the cost of shortages can be excessive up to and including cancelling surgery. From our experience, many inventory managers rely on manual approaches and intuition to set inventory control parameters.

Unveiling the veil: Exploring experiences of patient-initiated workplace violence in long-term care and mental health and substance use settings.

Background: This paper focuses on patient-initiated workplace violence (referred to WPV hereafter) towards healthcare workers in long-term care (LTC) and mental health and substance use (MHSU) care settings. While an extensive body of evidence has thoroughly examined WPV, our understanding of what takes place immediately before or during a violent incident, known as 'on-the-spot' experiences is limited.

Objective: This study examined (a) 'on-the-spot' experiences, (b) contributing factors, and (c) warning signs of impending WPV using the experiences of healthcare worker victims and witnesses and healthcare attendees in LTC and MHSU.