About the Alliance
Who we are and what we do
The Alliance of Wound Care Stakeholders is a 501(c)(6) nonprofit multidisciplinary trade association representing physician specialty societies, clinical and patient associations whose mission is to promote evidenced-based quality care and access to products and services for people with chronic wounds. Through advocacy and educational outreach in the regulatory, legislative, and public arenas, the Alliance unites leading wound care organizations and experts to advocate on public policy issues that may create barriers to patient access to treatments or care. Our key focus areas are coding, coverage and reimbursement; quality measures and wound care research.Since its founding in 2002, the Alliance has enabled the wound care clinical community to collectively and collaboratively engage on issues of commonality, elevating the visibility and united voice of wound care providers to regulators and policy makers.
We achieve this by:
- Communicating frequently with federal policymakers regarding Alliance positions and concerns when a policy is being drafted, issued or updated.
- Educating regulators and legislators about the impact that evolving policies have on wound care.
- Initiating and convening member meetings with Members of Congress and their staff, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) senior level staff, CMS contractors, DMEMAC and A/B MAC Medical Directors, the FDA and other government stakeholders.
- Collaboratively developing and submitting comments to solve coverage, coding and payment issues and address quality issues that impact the Alliance’s members.
- Monitoring and analyzing issues affecting quality, coverage, coding and reimbursement impacting wound care clinical practice.
- Serving as a resource to members in order to answer and clarify specific policy questions immediately.
- Updating members regularly, alerting about new and draft policies, their anticipated impact and implications and when to take action.
The Alliance holds regular meetings in tandem with national wound care meetings and convenes monthly conference calls and issue-driven work groups to take action on issues of importance. Now representing 20+ clinical societies, the Alliance makes its unified, collective voice heard on a range of important issues including:
- wound care quality measures
- wound care research
- cellular and/or tissue-based products for wounds (CTPs)
- negative pressure wound therapy (NPWT)
- surgical dressings
- antimicrobial wound care dressings
- pneumatic compression devices
- hyperbaric oxygen therapy
- and much more.
Celebrating our 15th AnniversaryIn 2017, the Alliance celebrated its 15th anniversary of bringing a unified wound care voice to health policy issues.Watch our festive 15th anniversary video and learn more about the founding of the Alliance back in 2002 and the impact we’ve had since then. |
