Cate Fortier

I work for an agency that deals with mainly Medicaid/managed care. The agency does not supply us with anything other than vinyl gloves and masks (N95 and surgical). We also get a bit more than for dressing supplies, but not much. Patients who are set up with a wound care clinic usually get enough supplies to bring home with them for 1 dressing change. The day of their wound care appt I call in their supplies order and it takes 2-4 days for supplies to be received. If you have a medical supply company local to you then you can bring a copy of the wound care orders and have them filled in person. Typically once I establish an account with the DME company (We use Byram) then re-ordering supplies is much faster and they usually come within 48 hours. Always add nitrile gloves onto the supply order! For skin tears and other new wounds, you technically need an order to do any wound care anyways. I call the doctor, ask for an order for whatever dressing it is I want to do, and then tell them I'm putting in an order for supplies with x company. Byram is really good about verifying the order with the doctor the same day I order supplies. Wound care supplies are expensive and your agency does not receive any money to purchase them for Medicaid patients. It's not a two class system, it's just insurance reimbursement differences. Wound care supplies are part of the payment received by the agency for Medicare patients. It sucks for us, but imagine eating the costs of those supplies for every single patient who doesn't have Medicare. The order I placed today was $1,200 for a one month supply of puracol, mepilex, Alginate, etc. That was just for one patient!