Identifying wound prevalence using the Mobile Wound Care program.

Measuring the prevalence of wounds within health care systems is a challenging and complex undertaking. This is often compounded by the clinicians' training, the availability of the required data to collect, incomplete documentation and lack of reporting of this type of data across the various health care settings. To date, there is little published data on wound prevalence across regions or states. This study aims to identify the number and types of wounds treated in the Gippsland area using the Mobile Wound Care (MWC™) program. The MWC program has enabled clinicians in Gippsland to collect data on wounds managed by district nurses from four health services. The main outcomes measured were patient characteristics, wound characteristics and treatment characteristics of wounds in Gippsland. These data create several clinical and research opportunities. The identification of predominant wound aetiologies in Gippsland provides a basis on which to determine a regional wound prospective and the impact of the regional epidemiology. Training that incorporates best practice guidelines can be tailored to the most prevalent wound types. Clinical pathways that encompass the Australian and New Zealand clinical practice guidelines for the management of venous leg ulcers can be introduced and the clinical and economical outcomes can be quantitatively measured. The MWC allows healing times (days) to be benchmarked both regionally and against established literature, for example, venous leg ulcers.