The 24th Annual Clinical Symposium on Advances in Skin and Wound Care, October 26-30, 2008, in Las Vegas, Nevada, will welcome Kathleen D. Schaum, MS, to an encore keynote presentation. Her standing-room only audience at last year's keynote address, "Wound Care Coverage Determinations Report Card: Pass or Fail?" was so compelling that an updated presentation is the order of the day. Ms Schaum, a definite motivator and change agent, challenged attendees to take a proactive role in the creation and revision of medical policies that pertain to wound care on behalf of the patients and the organizations they serve. She devised a novel interactive test for the audience using an outcome-oriented self-assessment tool aimed at evaluating each attendee for his or her medical policy advocacy work. Few in the audience received a passing grade on their report cards. Then Ms Schaum challenged attendees to increase their attention to coverage, coding, and payment issues. Thus, it is fitting that we invited her back to discuss changes affecting wound care professionals in 2008 and to follow-up the knowledge gained by the attendees in the year gone by through an updated quiz for the attendees.
Successful wound care coverage, coding, and payment determinations are about paying attention to details. The adage that "no amount of genius can overcome a preoccupation for attention to details" is apropos to Ms Schaum's ethos. Those who know Ms Schaum are aware of her "genius" side, as well as her analytic side through her depth of regulatory knowledge and her gift for translation of that information to us in a practical clinical format.
On a personal level, Ms Schaum aspires to "be the best" at what she does and to help others achieve excellence as well. Her work ethic is rooted in her father's example of arduous work of 50 years in the steel mills in Pennsylvania. Through encouragement from her mother and teachers, she became the first in her family to attend college. Ms Schaum credits a list of mentors for expanding her academic capabilities and clinical business acumen.
First, it was the director of dietetics at The Ohio State University Hospital who assigned her to an initiative to become the first hospital in the nation to have computerized databases for nutritional information. Simultaneously her masters' thesis project included the creation of the first computerized nutritional data bank in the country, which became a national model system, culminating in 3 seminal publications and a national training mission to disseminate these novel techniques to other major medical centers.
Later it was a hospital administrator in New Jersey that allowed Ms Schaum to participate in one of the first Diagnosis Related Group-based hospital payment systems in the country and to learn how payment drives medical treatment and clinical behaviors. Because of her gift for understanding complex systems and practices, a colleague encouraged her to launch a reimbursement strategy consulting business. Through her involvement with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, she learned how to work with the system rather than against it. And she taught manufacturers and professionals the communication principles and practices necessary to educate payers about patient needs. A nationally recognized thought and content leader, Ms Schaum is adept at sharing her informed access to a cornucopia of regulatory, coding, payment, and documentation information. She credits her journal editors who helped to develop her skills in packaging and delivering complex information in a readable format. As a result, Ms Schaum has published more than 100 articles in journals, including the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, The Remington Report, Home Healthcare Nurse, Today's Wound Clinic, and Advances in Skin & Wound Care. In fact, Ms Schaum's column, "Payment Strategies," in Advances in Skin & Wound Care, is in its 8th year of publication.
In her quest to be ahead of an ever-moving informational target during 2007, Ms Schaum attended, along with scientists and wound care physicians, every open Local Coverage Determination (LCD) meeting in the country that pertained to wound care. She stays current on major coding, payment, and coverage issues confronting the wound care industry by extensive reading, attendance at numerous conferences, and participation on committees for a variety of organizations. Then, she shares her knowledge through her own consulting company, her position as the director of medical device reimbursement for Healthpoint (Fort Worth, Texas), her publications, and her speaking engagements.
Ms Schaum asserts that wound care professionals are one of the "best kept secrets in the country," and she wants to help them manage their business outcomes as well as their patients' wound outcomes. We welcome her as our keynote speaker!
Richard "Sal" Salcido, MD