Cost-effective wound care: new priorities driven by outcomes.

International demands for optimizing the quality and cost effectiveness of health care requires the rethinking of traditional wound care paradigms. This essay defines cost effectiveness as the comparative measure of costs to achieve a given clinical outcome. Among some of the issues that need to be addressed are having more studies that compare the cost effectiveness of wound care modalities, defining what an acceptable outcome for a prescribed treatment program is, deciding who should define the significant outcome, and measuring the values of each therapy.