Inside Duke Medicine

DRAH’s Wound Healing Center gets new convenient location

Duke Raleigh Hospital's Wound Healing Center has a new convenient location that better meets the needs of its patients.

The center, which provides specialty care for patients with chronic wounds, diabetic ulcers, burns and acute care wounds, moved into its dedicated space in Medical Building 6 in May.

"We are the care for the wounds that won't heal," said Patricia Howe, program director for the center.

Patients go to their primary care physician to be monitored. If after 30 days they don't show any signs of healing, then they come to DRAH's Wound Healing Center.

"We see the wound as a window to something more serious," Howe added.

The physician based care team consist of eight physicians in six specialties, three nurses, a nurse manager, an office coordinator and a program director who all care for around 30 patients a day. Patients are seen weekly until they are healed.

"Our goal is to heal 85 percent of our patients within a 16-week period," Covington said.

The center's actual healing rates within this time period are 93 percent.

The new center expands the number of exam rooms to nine, offers a centralized nursing station, adds new nursing staff members, and includes a designated check-in/out area.

The center plans to grow its physician group to 11 by the end of the year, according to Covington and Howe. There are also plans to move the hyperbaric chamber from the second floor of DRAH to Medical Building 6 with the rest of the Wound Healing Center.

"We want to be able to continue to provide this critical component of would care here directly within the center," Covington said.

Hyperbaric oxygen delivers oxygen directly to a patient's wounds and allows patients who couldn't otherwise heal to successfully heal, he said.

"One of the primary reasons that patients don't heal is because the oxygen is at an insufficient level in the wound bed, so hyperbaric oxygen creates an environment to allow healing to take place," Covington said.

Another important role the center plays is limb salvage and it has a success rate of 99 percent.

A diabetic lower extremity wound cost $20,000 per event and the average cost for amputation is $40,000, according to Covington, who believes that the services the center provides saves patients time and money and improves their quality of life.

"This is a big problem for patients," he said. "The psychosocial aspects, the lost productivity and work days and in general the patients every day life and their family -- these are all important factors."

That's where the center makes a difference.

"We have the latest advances in technology here at Duke Medicine to treat the underlying epidemiologies and the treatment here at the wound center to get the wound healed and have it stay healed," Howe said.