EWMA: Cost of Wound Care Surveys

Project period: 2009–2010

Generating data on wounds is of great concern of EWMA. Therefore, EWMA is actively involved in generating wound prevalence data. EWMA has, in collaboration with among others the Eucomed AWCS group, initiated a survey on "Prevalence of wounds in general & cost impact in the two treatment settings - hospital and home care".

The survey has so far been conducted in the UK and in Denmark. EWMA is currently encouraging and supporting wound surveys in other European countries. The final goal is  to generate a large set of European data on the prevalence and cost of wounds.

Aim

The survey will identify the number and type of wounds as well as treatment regimes and will provide an estimate of the amount of clinician time and inpatient bed-days directly attributable to wound care at an organisational level.
This type of information highlights the importance of specialist wound care expertise, by illustrating the high prevalence of wounds among hospital and community patients and the significant proportion of available resources which are devoted to wound complications, many of which could be avoided.

Methodology

The results of the survey are naturally of direct value for the local health care organisations involved. However, the aggregated results of several surveys from various countries are of wider value to the international wound management community. In order to promote generalisability, the project team has provided a common methodology and standard data collection instruments.

Participating clinicians are responsible for planning and performing the survey and will have the right to publish results in their own name.

The survey takes the form of a point prevalence study. The suggested data collection period is 1-2 days in an acute hospital setting and one week in a community health care organisation.

Participating clinicians will be contributing to the goal of creating evidence on the importance of good wound care across a number of countries and will have the opportunity to participate as co-authors on a future summary publication.  

Further information

Please contact the EWMA Secretariat if you are interested in further information about the study or possible future involvement as well as conducting a wound survey in your country.

The following articles, published in the EWMA Journal, provide information about the wound survey methodology:

• Henneberg E: EWMA Patient Outcome Group: Wound Survey Denmark, 2010
• Gottrup F: EWMA Wound Surveys: Resource consumption for wound care, 2011

Completed surveys

The EWMA wound survey method is based on a survey conducted in the Bradford and Airedale Primary care trust, UK, in 2007.

The first EWMA survey was conducted as a pilot survey in Denmark in 2010.

The results of these surveys can be found in the following publications:

• Vowden K, Vowden P. Posnett J. The resource costs of wound care in Bradford and Airedale primary care trust in the UK, Journal of Wound Care, vol 18, no. 3, March 2009
• Gottrup F ,Henneberg E, Trangbæk R, Bækmark N, Zøllner K, Sørensen J.Point prevalence of wounds and cost impact in the acute and community setting in Denmark, Journal of Wound Care vol 22 , no 8 , August 2013