FAQ

Because no two wounds or clients are the same, Good Wound Care provides an individualised service tailored to your care setting. Simply reach out to us so we can ensure you’re provided with the most appropriate fee.

When considering what it costs to have an advanced wound assessment and wound care plan, it is important to consider the true cost of hard to heal wounds. It always costs the client a lot more to have a wound that does not heal. This is because cheaper dressings used over a longer period of time, cost more than when more expensive dressings are used over a shorter period of time. Real costs are relative to one’s quality of life and are far beyond the price of the dressing or experienced advice that can make a difference. It is well proven that better quality dressings, although costing more per unit, when selected and used properly will heal wounds faster and with less complications than if cheaper products were used. It’s also important to remember that dressings don’t heal wounds, people do. If your current wound care plan is not considering the type of wound you have, your current costs are likely to be very dressing focused with little improvement.

Contact Good Wound Care today to discuss your wound or oedema situation and to request a written fee schedule. Fees are arranged either per hour or per care bundle and are tailored specifically to your care setting. Third party written approval is required prior to service. Program funded individuals require confirmation of third party responsibility for fees before service commencement. We are happy to work with third parties to set up service agreements.

Discuss this with your health insurance provider as this will depend on your health fund ancillary cover. You may be able to claim a reimbursement and we can provide a compliant tax invoice.

Good Wound Care accepts referrals from the individual (self -referral), health professionals, funding providers, case managers, a family member or carer, all with your consent in mind.

Please see our referrals page for more information on ways to refer and our terms. While referrals from GPs are not always necessary, if your doctor is involved with your wound care or if you have a significant medical history or multiple medications, a GP referral greatly assists communication and collaboration.

Most individuals or facilities will already have some dressings and supplies that will suffice for the initial assessment. As Good Wound Care does not supply products, individuals are responsible for purchasing ongoing recommended products. If additional consumables need to be used at consults, these will be charged following discussion. Advice can be given to assist sourcing cost effective products upon request and every effort is made to formulate a wound dressing and/or compression plan with your preference and value for money in mind. There may be additional charges for equipment such as wound debridement or lymph taping, or if no dressings are available at the visit time. Equipment such as compression garments and pumps are additional and may be invoiced directly from the supplier.

When attending consults at a facility, Good Wound Care in the first instance will endeavour to use products already on your formulary or that you can easily source, bearing in mind that recommendations may be made for alternate products as clinically indicated.

When you first make contact with Good Wound Care, we will ask you about your wound or oedema problem and answer any questions you have. Information will be provided about the service and anticipated fees. You will be informed if a written referral is required for additional medical information or to confirm your funding source. Funded clients are responsible for fees until confirmed in writing by the third party. If you are referred by someone else, Good Wound Care will acknowledge the referral and then contact you to arrange a suitable appointment time.

If you are anxious about the assessment or experience wound pain, please mention this prior to the visit so we can attend at the best time and plan when you take pain relief.

Continue to wear any compression you already are using – because removing it before the visit is not good for your wound/limb.

Let us know if you usually remove the dressing prior to a home visit (for showering for example). It may be useful for the first assessment to keep the used dressing in a plastic bag so we can assess your wound exudate.

It can be a good idea to make sure you are wearing appropriate loose fitting or easily removed clothing.

A clean hand towel for hand washing is appreciated and towels for washing/drying body parts.

It can be helpful to have someone with you as a second set of ears.

Write down any questions you have and ask us no matter what they may be.

Ask us to explain anything again and don’t be afraid to say you don’t fully understand.

You may like to ask us about any research you have done and show us previous photos you have of what your wound looked like previously.

Your contact details will be checked and the consent form explained and signed (this includes information on your consent, privacy, safety, fees, rights and responsibilities). We will then complete an initial assessment which usually involves lots of discussion about your wound/oedema history and a comprehensive wound assessment is undertaken including measurements, imaging and other tests. You will be provided with information about your wound/oedema and you are encouraged to ask any questions at any time.

Once a plan is formulated with you, this can be reported to others in your health care team if needed and any requests made for additional information. Further review visits can be planned if required and Good Wound Care can provide follow up support and education. How often you will need to be seen can be discussed at the initial visit but this usually depends on the severity of your wound/oedema and how complex the care plan may be. Some people require only one visit, while others require more support over a longer period of time to ensure the wound has improved enough to continuing healing.

This is a great question.

Good Wound Care can assist your existing team and many times they are grateful for the expertise of a wound and lymphoedema clinician. For complex and hard to heal wounds, this adds value to your health care team and expedites your healing results.

Many health professionals are skilled in general wound care, but for many wounds, it is timely to seek out an expert in the field. Often times, wounds fail to progress because there is a lack of consistency in the care despite everyone’s best efforts.

Because your wound matters, if you experience any of the following, it may be time to consider the services of Good Wound Care:

• you don’t know what type of wound you have and what’s being done about it
• you don’t feel in control of your wound care
• you don’t know why different dressings are being used
• dressings are changed often and you’ve tried everything
• lots of people have many ideas about what would work and you’re confused
• many health care workers are involved in your care and there is conflicting opinions on what’s best to use
• your wound prevents you from going out
• your wound has not shown signs of healing within the last 4 weeks
• you live with a chronic wound and would like help in how to best manage it
• your wound heals but keeps coming back
• you find it difficult to stick to compression even though you’ve been told you need it
• you would like to manage your own wound with someone guiding you
• you find the cost of wound care products financially difficult
• you need advanced wound care help to better understand that good wound care is more than just choosing different dressings

Yes, or when appropriate you can be supported to attend your own dressing or compression.

Good Wound Care is predominantly an assessment and consultative service and generally does not attend each dressing change. We will ensure your wound plan is effectively communicated to your chosen team or you are supported to self -care if that is your desire and safe to do so. After the initial wound assessment and recommendations, if required, Good Wound Care can review your wound progress and make changes, keeping your health care team informed. Wounds heal best when a multi-disciplinary team works together on the individual’s goals.

This is the answer everyone wants for good reason. This depends on many factors including the type of wound you have, what is preventing it from healing and how deep it is. Most hard to heal wounds took some time to get that way, so they do take some problem solving to get you onto the right treatments. Our approach to wound care is informed by up-to-date scientific evidence. It does require that you get involved as much as you can, and work together with us. Good Wound Care will guide you in the whole process and design a care plan that works for you and your daily routine. Our main goal is to meet your needs and advance wound healing to meet a desired outcome. While some chronic wounds may heal in 1-2 months, others may take much longer. Research tells us that a chronic wound that shows early signs of healing, once therapies have started, has a much higher chance of going on to achieve full healing in the long term. It is better for us to discuss healing timeframes with our clients once we start to see these improvements.

When it comes to complex wound issues and oedemas, face to face visits are generally preferred for a better experience and quicker results. For less complex cases and routine reviews, telehealth consultations are often clinically suitable and we are happy to offer this service in the Geelong and Ballarat regions via our secure online platform. Good Wound Care is pleased to provide a broader Telehealth service to clients who live in Victoria outside of our Geelong/Ballarat service boundary. This means more people have access to a Wound Consultant Nurse and Lymphoedema Practitioner where limited services exist or travelling far distances is not practical.

Other benefits of our wound telehealth services include:

• Convenience
• More timely access to wound care reviews
• Reduces waiting times and free’s up other services in high demand
• Reduces the burden of travel
• Enables care to remote locations
• Facilitates increased patient engagement and self-wound care
• Prevents interruptions in the delivery of the wound care plan
• Reduces emergency department visits and hospital admissions
• Reduces overall cost of wound management in the community

Good Wound Care’s telehealth functionality is designed to provide a simple to use web-based platform that is compliant with the Australian standards for online security and encryption. Telehealth consultations don’t require any special software or login. A link is sent to your email or phone to simply click to enter the appointment (requires internet, webcam equipment, smart phone or tablet).

Prior to your first telehealth appointment, we will send you a consent form to complete online beforehand, and ask you to send us photos of:

• 1 close up wound image
• 1 mid-length away from the wound, with approx. 15-25 cms of the surrounding skin
• 1 further away from the wound. This is a body part image of where the wound is located.
• 1 image of the old dressing with fluid.

Telehealth services are not effective for everyone and it’s important to identify where wound telehealth may not be appropriate:

• Where technological barriers exist
• Where the patient with the wound or their family is unwilling or unable to engage in telehealth or self-management
• Where there are suspected critical, severe or unstable conditions (please check our services page to learn more about ineligible wounds)

We will consider your referral and discuss this with you if alternatives are available.

Good Wound Care’s hours of operation are flexible to your needs 7 days a week. Visit days and times are arranged in advance and availability is dependent on where Good Wound Care is travelling to other clients.

Yes this service is available by prior arrangement and will involve an additional fee for evenings and weekends

Appointment times are available at most times of the day. The appointment length is dependent on your needs and can be discussed upon referral. Initial assessments and compression fittings are often longer.

We endeavour to arrive as close as possible to the pre-arranged visit time. Please bear in mind that our mobile service is influenced heavily by road conditions and sometimes unpredictable situations with other clients. Good Wound Care will phone to update you on the arrival time if this is anticipated to be 20 minutes either side of the agreed visit time. Please let us know should you have time critical appointments on the day we are visiting you. We offer everyone a high level of flexibility in scheduling and availability which benefits our clients.

Yes of course. Good Wound Care is primarily a Wound Care Advanced consultative service but oedema’s often go hand in hand with complex wounds. You are welcome to discuss you Lymphoedema needs. See our Services page for range of Lymphoedema services Good Wound Care can provide.

Many people living in larger bodies (who also have wounds or oedema) may have been told they need to lose weight to be healthier or manage their condition. This is not the norm at Good Wound Care as our practice follows weight inclusive guidelines and a Health At Every Size® approach. If you’re not familiar with the evidence for this, these are the principles:

• WEIGHT INCLUSIVITY – Accept and respect the inherent diversity of body shapes and sizes and reject the idealising or pathologising of specific weights.
• HEALTH ENHANCEMENT – Support health policies that improve and equalise access to information and services, and personal practices that improve human well-being, including attention to individual physical, economic, social, spiritual, emotional and other needs.
• EATING FOR WELL-BEING – Promote flexible, individualised eating based on hunger, satiety, nutritional needs, and pleasure, rather than any externally regulated eating plan focused on weight control.
• RESPECTFUL CARE – Acknowledge our biases, and work to end weight discrimination, weight stigma and weight bias. Provide information and services from an understanding that socioeconomic status, race, gender, sexual orientation, age, and other identities impact weight stigma, and support environments that address these inequities.
• LIFE ENHANCING MOVEMENT – Support physical activities that allow people of all sizes, abilities, and interests to engage in enjoyable movement, to the degree that they choose.

It’s important at Good Wound Care to support people of all sizes with access to evidenced based healthcare, should they choose it. You can learn more about weight inclusive care and the HAES® approach from the reputable sources below. A note on language: Many of these resources use the word ‘fat’ as a neutral descriptor. The words ‘obesity’ and ‘overweight’ are terms used that medicalise larger bodies are terms used that medicalise and stigmatise larger bodies, and as such are not used at Good Wound Care.

This link provides a simple explanation of why we do not recommend intentional weight loss or dieting. A person’s weight is not a reliable indicator of health. Intentional weight loss does not lead to long term health improvements and has many negative side effects. Evidence shows that improvements to overall health can be gained independently of weight loss.

HAES Health Sheet Library Information on common health conditions including Type 2 diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure. The sheets are weight inclusive practice guides for clinicians and patients. Or for a full bank of research, visit HAES Health Sheets – Resources.

Weight And Healthcare Subscribe to this newsletter by leader in the field Ragen Chastain. She examines weight science, weight stigma and what evidence, ethics, and lived experience teach us about best healthcare and public health practices for higher weight people.

Association for Size Diversity and Health:

• HAES approach Unpacking HAES® principles and debunking myths
• HAES Curriculum A peer-reviewed curriculum designed for teaching health professionals and university students about the Health At Every Size® model (currently under revision) 

Key Medical Opinion Leaders on Weight Neutral, evidence-based healthcare:

• Dr Joshua Wolrich Weight-Neutral Nutrition
• Dr Asher Larmie The Fat Doctor UK and the #noweigh campaign to end medical weight stigma
• Dr Gregory Dodell Instagram Everything Endocrine
• Dr Lindo Bacon The body manifesto video series and other key papers and learning resources

Australian Resources

• Size Inclusive Health Australia
• Dr Fiona Willer AdvAPD

Health At Every Size and HAES are registered trademarks of the Association for Size Diversity and Health and used with permission.

Trauma informed care is ultimately a strengths based framework about equity. It aims to meet people where they are at, understand that something may have happened to them in their past, that could happen again in their future. Being trauma informed is about acceptance, inclusion and belonging and a recognition that we all come from diverse backgrounds and need to be considerate, compassionate, and inclusive of everyone. Many people who have suffered a traumatic event or who have lifelong PTSD come from Australia’s diverse needs population groups. We aim to consider peoples interactions with our staff, how we deliver services and embedding the principles of trauma informed care in our work. These are:

• Safety
• Trustworthiness & transparency
• Peer support and mutual self help
• Collaboration & mutuality
• Empowerment, voice, and choice
• Cultural, historical and gender issues

You can read more about trauma informed practice at Mental Health Australia

Under the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency, the Nursing and Midwifery Board defines an APN as a nurse practising at an advanced practice level incorporate professional leadership, education, research and support of systems into their practice. Their practice includes relevant expertise, critical thinking, complex decision-making, autonomous practice and is effective and safe. APN’s work within a generalist or specialist context and they are responsible and accountable in managing people who have complex health care requirements.