Workgroups & Areas of Focus
Alliance advocacy protects patient and provider access to wound care products and services by focusing on policies impacting coding, coverage and payment. In addition to monitoring and analyzing policies in real-time, the Alliance regularly convenes product- and issue-specific Workgroups to address emerging issues, identify shared challenges, and collaboratively vet potential policy solutions. Workgroup participants play a key role in developing policy recommendations and shaping Alliance comments submitted to regulators.
Alliance Workgroups include those focused on:
The Alliance defends and protects a broad range of product categories, including:
Alliance Workgroups include those focused on:
- Blood-Derived Products
- Cellular and/or Tissue Based Products for Wounds (CTPs, or skin substitutes)
- Government Affairs
- Imaging
- Lymphedema
- Negative Pressure Wound Therapy
- Surgical Dressings
- Topical Oxygen
Alliance advocacy focuses on regulatory policies and legislation spanning:
- Capitol Hill health care legislation
- CMS coverage policies, including national coverage determinations (NCDs) and local coverage determinations (LCDs)
- CMS payment policies including the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule and Outpatient / Inpatient / Home Health Prospective Payment Systems
- Quality measures
- FDA guidances
- AHRQ technology assessments
Alliance advocacy addresses current and emerging threats to wound care practice, such as:
- Competitive bidding
- Coding issues, including HCPCS coding and CPT issue
- Exclusion of wound care quality measures
- Inequitable CMS payments
- Lack of acceptance of real-world evidence and real-world data
- Prior authorization challenges
- Perceived lack of wound care evidence
- Restrictive coverage policies
The Alliance defends and protects a broad range of product categories, including:
- Antimicrobial dressings
- Blood-derived products
- CTPs (skin substitutes)
- Compression
- Debridement services
- Hyperbaric oxygen therapy
- Negative pressure wound therapy
- Surgical dressings
- Topical oxygen therapy
- Ultrasound therapy
The Alliance supports wound care research, with publications including:
- “Chronic wound prevalence and the associated cost of treatment in Medicare beneficiaries: changes between 2014 and 2019” (Journal of Medical Economics, 2023)
- “An Economic Evaluation of the Impact, Cost, and Medicare Policy Implications of Chronic Nonhealing Wounds” (Value in Health, 2017)
- “Harnessing Big Data for Wound Healing Research” (2016 ISPOR presentation)
- “Consensus Principles for Wound Care Research Obtained Using a Delphi Process” (the “POWER” paper, published in 2012)
