Strategic planning for the wound care clinic in a managed care environment.

The present trend in healthcare delivery is away from classic fee-for-service practices toward providing tightly controlled "products" in the form of Health Maintenance Organizations (HMO's). To thrive in this changing marketplace, wound clinic practitioners must understand the background of managed care and its terms, and be familiar with the concepts of capitation and incentives. Part of managed care's impact upon the specialty of wound care is that practitioners must define outcomes, healing rates and standards of care. Patient referral will depend on the cost effective delivery of care from all specialists in addition to the primary care physician. To meet these needs the authors created a hospital based wound care clinic with multiple interrelated areas of influence and have gathered statistical data. Managed care is here to stay and wound care practitioners must learn how to prepare for it and deal with it effectively.