Sarah Bush Lincoln’s Advanced Wound Center has been recognized with a prestigious national award for clinical excellence by Healogics, the Health Center’s partner to provide highly specialize treatment for chronic wounds.
The Advanced Wound Center received the 2018 President’s Circle Award for exceeding performance measures, and is one of only 39, out of 413 eligible Centers nationwide to be recognized as the “best of the best.” For three consecutive years, the SBL Advanced Wound Center has also been recognized as a Robert A. Warriner III, MD, Center of Excellence, achieving patient satisfaction rates of higher than 92 percent and a healing rate of at least 91 percent in less than 30 median days to heal. The award is named for Dr. Robert A. Warriner III, a pioneer in wound care and the former Chief Medical Officer for Healogics.
Leaders, physicians and clinicians recently gathered to celebrate the national award. “We are proud to be able to offer such a vital service to the people of our community, and to be able to offer it with such a high level of excellence,” SBL President and CEO Jerry Esker said. “We have an excellent team of doctors and clinical staff who are all dedicated to healing chronic wounds and improving the quality of life for people.”
The Advanced Wound Center has been working to meet the area’s growing needs for wound care treatment since July 2012. “We are able to offer wound care at the highest level,” Advanced Wound Center Medical Director Robert Biggs, MD, said. “The Center’s goal is to work with our patients to enhance their quality of life, and that’s what we focus on when we treat their wounds.”
The Center offers highly specialized wound care to people suffering from diabetic ulcers, pressure ulcers, infections and other chronic wounds, which have not healed in a reasonable amount of time. Some of the leading-edge treatments offered include negative pressure wound therapy, debridement, application of cellular-based tissue or skin substitutes to the wound, offloading or total contact casts and hyperbaric oxygen therapy.
Hyperbaric oxygen therapy is an essential part of chronic wound treatment plans. This type of medical treatment increases the amount of oxygen in the patient’s blood, allowing oxygen to pass more easily through the plasma into wounds. In the chamber, the patient is surrounded with 100 percent oxygen at higher than normal atmospheric pressure. Throughout the treatment, the patient is supervised by a specially trained physician and monitored by a technician.
The Advanced Wound Center is a member of Healogics network of nearly 700 Wound Care Centers, with access to benchmarking data and proven experience treating approximately 2.5 million chronic wounds. For more information or to make an appointment, call (217) 238-4850 or go to www.sarahbush.org. A physican referral is not needed to make an appointment at the Advanced Wound Center.
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Advanced Wound Center staff members pictured left to right are Greg Spillman, Clinic Director; Debbie Murray, RN; Nikki Heltsely, APRN; Sara Cremeens, RN; Katie Flach, LPN; Kelli Gullett; Robert Biggs, MD; Kelsey Wente, RN; Bob Kinnison, Area Vice President Healogics.