Clinical and Operational Outcomes Associated with the Adoption of a Digital Wound Care Solution in Home Health...

Wounds increase the risk of hospitalization in home health (HH) settings by up to 52%. They also consume a notable portion of HH budgets due to frequent nursing visits for wound assessment and care. To address these challenges, a U.S.-based HH enterprise adopted a Digital Wound Care Solution (DWCS) to enhance wound management and operational efficiency. This study examines the impact of integrating the DWCS into practice, focusing on clinical and operational indicators and potential cost savings.

This study employed a quasi-experimental pre-post design to evaluate the impact of the DWCS on clinical and operational outcomes. Data were extracted from the DWCS and EMR databases, encompassing pre-adoption (2022) and post-adoption (2023) periods. The analysis included wound data from 16,276 patients in 2023 and 19,252 patients in 2022, covering an 8-month period (March-October) across 11 branches. The key performance indicators included skilled nursing (SN) visits per episode (VPE), time to complete SN visits, hospitalization rates, and staff optimization.

The adoption of the DWCS was associated with clinical and operational improvements. SN VPE decreased by 7.5%, resulting in an estimated annual savings of $1.3 million. A directional change in wound-related hospitalization rates was observed at 30 days (20.7% to 20.3%) and 60 days (32.4% to 31.5%); however, these changes did not reach statistical significance and should be interpreted as trends. The projected prevention of 200 hospitalizations with estimated annual cost savings of $3.4 million to the health system represents modeled projections based on observed directional trends rather than realized savings. A 1.9% shift in staff roles increased the utilization of licensed practical nurses with no adverse indicators identified within the scope of this analysis, saving $112,748 annually.

The adoption of the DWCS was associated with fewer and shorter SN visits and a shift toward more LPN utilization, with anticipated reductions in costs Wound-related admissions showed downward trends but did not reach statistically significant levels. This pre-post design precludes causal attribution, and findings should be interpreted as associations rather than definitive effects of the intervention. These findings support further investigation of wound care models integrating AI within a value-based home health setting.