Wound Interdisciplinary Teams (WIT): A Community- Based Pragmatic Randomized Controlled Trial

Overview

Wounds that are slow to heal (chronic) may be managed in different ways. In Ontario, care in the community for most of these is coordinated by the local Community Care Access Centre (CCAC). One or more health professionals might deliver treatment, individually or as part of a wound care team, with different members having different kinds of training (interdisciplinary team), which may or may not include wound care. Community treatment by interdisciplinary teams has been shown to be more effective and cost-effective for some long-standing health problems, but further scientific evidence is needed to determine if this is also true for chronic wounds. This study compares the usual way chronic wounds are being managed in the community with a so-called "intermediate care" approach. In this study, intermediate care will involve health service providers following certain agreed-upon steps (evidence-based best practice) from first contact with the client through assessment, treatment, and on to referral to a hospital specialty wound care team, if needed.

For certain types of chronic illness, planning case management and providing care according to evidence-based guidelines (published methods that have been supported scientifically) results in better clinical outcomes and better cost-effectiveness. Wound management by interdisciplinary teams may have these advantages in both the community primary care setting and the hospital specialized care setting. Systematic review of the literature indicated that the evidence was incomplete to support implementation of an intermediate care model for community management of chronic wounds. Therefore, the Ontario Health Technology Advisory Committee recommended that a field evaluation be conducted to provide stronger evidence about the relative effectiveness, cost-effectiveness and feasibility of managing chronic wounds in the community using both standardized, comprehensive primary care and a systematic method of referral to a specialty, multidisciplinary team based in a hospital