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Improving the quality of pressure ulcer management in a skilled nursing facility

Pressure ulcers (PUs) are a serious health care problem for nursing home residents and a key quality metric for regulators. Three initiatives were introduced at a 128‐bed facility to improve PU prevention. First, a Quality Assurance and Performance Improvement project and a Root Cause Analysis were conducted to improve the facility's wound care programme. Second, a digital wound care management solution was adopted to track wound management. Third, the role of skin integrity coordinator was created as a central point of accountability for wound care‐related activities and related performance metrics. Improvements in PU prevention were tracked using Centers of Medicare and Medicaid data, specifically (a) the percentage of long‐stay high‐risk residents with PUs and (b) the percentage of short‐stay residents with PUs that are new or have worsened. PU prevalence for long‐stay high‐risk residents was 12.99% (Q4 2016), and upon implementation of these initiatives, the facility saw continued reductions in PU prevalence to 2.9% (Q4 2017), while PUs for short‐stay residents were maintained at zero throughout this period. This study highlights the power of effective management combined with real‐time data analytics, as enabled by digital wound care management, to make significant improvements in health care delivery.