The Business of Wound Care at SAWC Spring

Kathleen D. Schaum, MS, previews her two presentations at SAWC Spring, “Business of Wound Care: Washington and its Impact on Wound Care: Coding, Coverage & Payment Policies Through a Wound Care Lens” (Saturday, 4:45–5:10 pm), and “2023 Coding and Payment for Cellular and/or Tissue-Based Products for Skin Wounds (CTPs)" (Sunday, 9:15–10:15 am).

Kathleen Schaum:
Okay. Hello everyone, my name is Kathleen Schaum. I am the president of Kathleen D. Schaum & Associates Inc, which is a reimbursement strategy and education consulting firm for wound and ulcer management professionals, physician offices, hospital-owned outpatient provider-based departments and manufacturers.

I am also one of the founding board members of Today's Wound Clinic, which began as a printed journal and is now an online journal.

Every month I provide up-to-date reimbursement information in my Today's Wound Clinic column entitled, Business Briefs. And every quarter, in an additional Today's Wound Clinic column entitled Consultation Corner, I share a real life reimbursement problem for which I was contracted to solve.

In addition to sharing reimbursement information via my written columns and my consultation work with professionals and manufacturers, I enjoy providing reimbursement education at virtual and live national, regional, and local symposiums. As well as at manufacturer's national sales meetings.

Therefore, I am looking forward to presenting two different topics at the 2023 SAWC Spring, which will be held in National Harbor, Maryland, on this month from April 26 to 30. I hope you are planning to attend this fabulous symposium, and I hope you'll consider attending both of my presentations.

On Saturday April 29th at 4:45 PM Marcia Nusgart and I will be participating in "The Business of Wound Care." Our presentation is entitled "Washington and its Impact on Wound Care: Coding Coverage and Payment Policies Through a Wound Care Lens." We will help the attendees to understand how recent Medicare initiatives relate to wound and ulcer management. And we will share how recent medical coverage determinations impact wound care clinicians and their patients. Most important, we will help the attendees learn how to make their voices heard to Medicare and to the Medicare contractors and how to be advocates to support wound and ulcer management issues.

In 2022, wound and ulcer management specialists and patients had some important reimbursement wins. But, we could have done better if more stakeholders had provided comments and data to Medicare and to their contractors. In 2023, we have much more vital advocacy work to perform. Our patients are depending on us to advocate for coverage and payment for the services, procedures and products they need. Therefore, I hope you will join us at this particularly important presentation that will teach you how to be an excellent advocate.

Now, one of the major procedures that required a lot of advocacy attention in the past few years, and that will continue to require advocacy attention in 2023, is the application of cellular and or tissue-based products for skin wounds, whose acronym is CTPs. Because Medicare has been awarding different types of HCPC codes to these products, has suggested changing the name of the product category and has been trying to change the payment for CTPs in both hospital-owned outpatient wounded ulcer management provider-based departments and physician offices.

Many professionals, holders, billers, and manufacturers are confused about the appropriate coding coverage and payment for CTPs. Therefore, my second presentation entitled 2023, "Coding and Payment for Cellular and or Tissue-Based Products for Skin Wounds," will be delivered on Sunday morning, April 30th, at 9:15 AM. During that time, I will do my best to clear up the confusion pertaining to coding, purchasing the correct size product, reporting discarded portions of CTPs, and evaluating the financial feasibility of the various CTPs based upon the 2023 Medicare physician fee schedule and the 2023 outpatient prospective payment system.

During this very detailed presentation, that includes more than 50 slides, attendees should perform a self-check of their own CTP reimbursement knowledge. And should make a to-do list about any coding, payment, and coverage details, and or processes, that must be improved when they return to their respective places of service.

I hope you can tell that I am very enthusiastic about sharing these two presentations with the 2023 SAWC Spring attendees. As always, I look forward to sharing reimbursement knowledge with anyone who wants to learn. And I can't wait to talk to you live after my presentations or anytime you see me in the meetings or in the exhibit hall. See you in a few weeks and thank you for listening to this preview.