Scott & White Wound Care and Hyperbaric Medicine Clinic
New Scott & White Wound Care and Hyperbaric Medicine Clinic Opens in Temple
The new Wound Care and Hyperbaric Medicine Clinic at Scott & White opened on October 11 at the South Loop Clinic (formerly South Loop Annex Building). It offers dedicated, coordinated care for patients with wounds as well as new treatment options. While offering treatment for wounds is nothing new for Scott & White, having a dedicated and centralized clinic should improve care for wound patients and offer referring physicians a new choice for complex or difficult to heal wounds of all types.
Robert Plemmons, MD, FACPDr. Plemmons has eight years experience in wound care and hyperbaric medicine and holds the Certified Wound Specialist (CWS) designation from the American Academy of Wound Management. In addition, Dr. Plemmons is board-certified in both internal medicine and infectious diseases. The Wound Care Clinic also has two Scott & White podiatrists as part-time staff to evaluate and treat foot and ankle wounds. |
The Wound Care Clinic has eight examination rooms, two hyperbaric oxygen chambers, and a nursing staff specially trained in wound management. Under the direction of Medical Director Robert Plemmons, MD, the clinic offers advanced wound healing modalities such as:
- cultured skin substitutes
- hyperbaric oxygen
- compression therapy, and
- negative pressure therapy.
The Wound Care Clinic offers hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) as a treatment option for some types of wounds. HBOT uses 100 percent oxygen administered in a pressurized chamber. This technique markedly increases the amount of oxygen delivered to body tissue by the blood. HBOT can provide many benefits, including:
- improved wound healing,
- better control of infection,
- new blood vessel formation, and
- the preservation of surgical flaps and grafts.
HBOT has been shown to be especially helpful in the treatment of some diabetic foot wounds and is really the only effective therapy for radiation injury.
"We will be providing wound care services full time, Monday through Friday" Dr. Plemmons says. "As a dedicated facility, this new clinic offers physicians and patients a single point of entry and address cases ranging from routine to highly complex."
The new clinic will offer treatment for all types of wounds, including:
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As a part of the Scott & White system, the new wound care clinic has a competitive advantage in the market by offering patients an integrated network of specialists who can be involved in their care.
"Because we are part of a large health care system, it is easy for us to refer patients to other providers at Scott & White, including interventional cardiologists, endocrinologists, and surgeons," Dr. Plemmons says. "I can read their notes and access their studies and they can review mine, thus enhancing the communication between all the physicians involved in a patient's care. Also, because we take a holistic approach to evaluation and treatment (assessing the whole patient--not just the wound) we are sometimes able to identify underlying systemic factors that are contributing to poor wound healing. We will work closely with the patient's primary care physician to address any such problems."
For more information on the Scott & White Wound Care Clinic call 254-724-6622.