The purpose of this program is to discuss the newly revised Tag F314 Pressure Ulcers, Guidance to Surveyors in Long Term Care. This revised guidance is expected to have a significant impact on the long term care setting as it has raised the bar on what CMS expects from the long term care setting. This revision of the guidance is the culmination of a three-year initiative from the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services. Pressure Ulcers in long term care settings is an important issue for CMS. Long-term care centers have anticipated this change and are anxious to learn how it will impact their survey outcomes. Change can be best understood by educating those who will be impacted by it. This program will provide those in the long-term care setting with the insights and reflections of the nurse consultants who participated in the development of this revised guidance.

Since the introduction of The Agency for Health Care Policy and Research (AHCPR) Clinical Practice Guidelines (Number 15; Treatment of Pressure Ulcers), issues concerning clinicians regarding proper wound care remain a top priority. The Guidelines represented the most comprehensive review of scientific and clinical knowledge available about treatment of pressure ulcers in adults.

According to the NPUAP Monograph published in 2001, the incidence and prevalence of pressure ulcers in Acute Care is reported to be 4-38% (Ref #1), in Long Term Care 2.2-23.9% and Home Care 0-17%, with an average of 7%.

The AHCPR Guidelines (Ref. # 2) along with current trends reported in literature today form the central core of this educational offering. The centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services recently completed its three-year project to revise the Tag F 314 Pressure Ulcer guidance to surveyors for long-term care facilities. These changes in the interpretation of the guidance have many implications for practice and for the survey process for long term care facilities. Staff from long-term care facilities have expressed concern about understanding the new Tag F314 document and asked for a focused and targeted educational program on just this topic in the general program on pressure ulcer practice principles, which is also offered by Education Essentials.

This offering provides a much-needed forum for presenting and discussing scientific approaches to changes in the guidance in Tag F-314 which was released on November 12, 2004. This highly interactive program provides each participant an opportunity to "Meet the Experts", as Drs Ayello and Lyder were the 2 nurses who served as consultants to the CMS panel which revised the Tag F 314 document

A recent survey of nursing text books revealed that students could be exposed to as little as 45 lines of text on pressure ulcers (Ayello, E.A., Meaney, G (2003) Replicating a survey of pressure ulcer content in nursing textbooks. JWCOCN 30 (5): 266-271). While there are national conferences on wound care for experts, the majority of wound care across settings is done by non-specialist clinicians who don't have the benefit of attendance or contact with national experts. A study by Zulkowski & Ayello (May 2004, Poster presented at SAWC, 2004) of nurses working in long term care facilities in a rural setting revealed deficits in pressure ulcer knowledge, including that most of these nurses did not know about the AHCPR guidelines. By bringing the latest wound care knowledge and presenting it in a format that translates into clinical application, a larger number of clinicians can be educated to enhance their practice. Dissemination of this information to those providing care to "at-risk" populations is critical to client's well being.

At the conclusion, attendees will be able to: