Why Wound Care Can Make or Break Your Star Ratings

In skilled nursing, your star ratings are everything. They determine your eligibility for referrals, impact your facility's reputation, and directly affect reimbursement. Yet, one of the biggest threats to your rating might be hiding in plain sight: wound care. Chronic wounds are one of the leading causes of avoidable hospitalizations, infection outbreaks, survey deficiencies, and even legal issues. And when wound management is left to overworked internal teams, the results can quietly chip away at your quality metrics and your stars. Let’s break down why outsourcing wound care to a specialized partner like Skilled Wound Care (SWC) isn’t just a clinical decision; it’s a strategic one. Wound Care and Your Star Ratings: The Hidden Connection

Your CMS Five-Star Quality Rating is built on three key components:

1. Health inspections

2. Quality measures (QMs)

3. Staffing
   

Wounds can negatively influence all three.

• Health inspections:  Wounds are one of the most common triggers for citations during surveys. Improper documentation, delayed interventions, or poor outcomes often lead to immediate jeopardy tags.
  

• Quality measures:  Pressure ulcers and wound-related rehospitalizations directly impact your QM scores. Facilities that fail to show proactive wound prevention and healing receive lower quality marks and fewer stars.
  

• Staffing: Facilities often lack the clinical bandwidth to manage complex wounds internally, especially during staffing shortages. When overwhelmed staff are forced to juggle wound care with other duties, outcomes suffer, and your ratings follow.

  
  

  The Real Cost of In-House Wound Care Trying to manage advanced wound care internally might seem like a cost-saving measure. But consider these hidden costs:

• Increased survey deficiencies and state penalties

• Higher hospital readmission rates and Medicare payment reductions

• Time-consuming documentation and audits

• Staff burnout and turnover due to clinical burden

• Legal risk from pressure injury lawsuits or care complaints

Without dedicated expertise, facilities are often reacting to wound issues after they've already impacted the bottom line.

Why Outsourcing Wound Care Is a Game-Changer

At Skilled Wound Care, we help facilities flip the script. Instead of reacting to wounds, we help you proactively prevent them, treat them faster, and document them better, all while reducing the burden on your nursing team.

Here’s how our outsourced wound care model boosts your performance: 1. Better Outcomes, Faster Healing: Our board-certified wound care physicians specialize in chronic wounds, pressure injuries, surgical wounds, and ulcers. With regular rounds and consistent oversight, our team helps reduce healing times, avoid infections, and prevent worsening of wounds. 2. Survey-Ready Documentation: We ensure wound documentation is complete, compliant, and audit-ready. Our team uses consistent language, timely updates, and proactive assessments to support your MDS and quality measures. 3. Reduced Rehospitalizations: Early detection and aggressive management by wound experts dramatically lower your risk of wound-related transfers. Our interventions help keep patients on-site, improving your continuity of care and your CMS metrics. 4. More Time for Your Nursing Staff: Your nurses are the backbone of your facility. Our outsourced model takes wound care off their plate so they can focus on what they do best: providing holistic, compassionate care without drowning in specialty needs or time-consuming dressing changes. 5. On-Site Consistency: No more waiting for outside consults or rushed coverage. Our team becomes part of your facility’s care rhythm, offering regular, consistent support that feels seamless to staff and patients alike.

Ready to Protect Your Stars?

Your facility has too much at stake to leave wound care to chance. With Skilled Wound Care, you’re not just outsourcing a service, you’re investing in results.

We offer:

• On-site physician-led wound care rounds

• Complete documentation support

• Support for pressure injury staging and survey prep

• Ongoing staff education and best practices

• A seamless partnership that boosts your performance metrics
  

Let us help you reduce risk, improve care, and protect your star ratings, all while making life easier for your staff and safer for your residents. Better care. Fewer deficiencies. Happier teams. That’s the Skilled Wound Care difference. Learn more today.