In June, which is Wound Care Awareness month, the Wound Care & Hyperbaric Center of University Hospitals Portage was awarded the Healogics President’s Circle Award. The award, given by Healogics, the largest provider of advanced wound care services, is given to wound care centers which demonstrate outstanding clinical and operational excellence.
“It is incredible. It is very special to us,” Program Director Jessica Brooks told The Weekly Villager on June 26. “Wound care awareness gives us a special opportunity to share with our community, our community partners and our community patients. It is special and it is something really unique that we are able to show what it is that we are doing on a regular basis here in the wound center.”
UH Portage was not the only branch that received the award, with UH Elyria and Lake West also awarded the distinguished honor. For UH Portage, which is located in a largely rural area, residents having access to the Center has gone a long way.
“It is incredibly important for the demographic that we serve that we have access to this advancement,” Brooks noted. “We are a little more rural out here and often times that means patients don’t have access to the more advanced treatments that they need to get on with their lives and that is not the case when it comes to the wound center. It is pretty special that we have a wound center in this area.”
Brooks attributed the Center’s efficiency in dealing with wounds to its advanced treatment options, including the use of the hyperbaric oxygen chamber, cellular tissue treatments and total contact casts, as UH Portage’s medical team is certified as master casters.
According to Brooks, the Center deals with approximately 40 patients daily who enter with untreated wounds and admitted 860 new patients just last year. She added that the Center recently developed a more direct partnership with the emergency department, which has enabled it to have immediate access to patients.
“They will work with us directly and get patients here just knowing we are able to take care of them in a timely manner; they will treat the wounded and get them into the wound center the next day,” she said. “There have been days that they go from the emergency room straight over to us.”
Having had a Wound Care & Hyperbaric Center added to the facility since 2010, medical director Dr. Jared Storck said that that the Center really started taking big strides since partnering with Healogics in 2015, the nation’s largest provider in advanced wound care treatment.
“What is most important is that it has been beneficial to the patients and the area,” Storck added. “It is tremendously impactful, and we are a reason why the hospital is doing well.”
Although the Center treats a variety of wounds, Storck said that top three most common wounds that doctors see are veinous ulcerations, swollen legs from bad veins, and diabetic foot ulcerations, a multi-system disease that afflicts the body and hardens the arteries and arterial ulcers, an open sore that is primarily caused by poor blood circulation.
“It makes it hard for blood to get down in the tiny little blood vessels that heal wounds, causing those vessels to become inflamed or puffy and they don’t have good blood flow and that means you can have injuries that heal very slowly,” he added.
The Center’s ability to treat wounds with a high degree of efficiency has been aided with the use of the hyperbaric oxygen chamber, which rushes oxygen into the wounds but also allows the patients to breath 100% oxygen, resulting in advanced healing rates across the board.
Storck said that the strides that the Center has made in the last decade by partnering with Healogics has also gone a long way with the medical staff.
“The team of nurses and staff that we have, their ability to efficiently and compassionately take care of people is better than any place in the city and my practice goes to different places and different centers,” he added. “This is the most efficient place, it is the highest rated in the area and it is really special to have that in Portage County for this patient population.”
Brooks said that as much as the Center has grown over the last several years, the advancements will continue as UH Portage seeks to improve on patient access. “When it becomes something that we are able to give, we need the access to be able to administer it to the patients. We are going to continue to focus on growing and continuing access to our community,” she said.
