National Wound Care Strategy Recommendations

24th Jul 2024

The National Wound Care Strategy Team are excited to share the evaluation of the initial work to implement the NWCSP Lower Limb Recommendations. This work has been a significant part of the National Wound Care Strategy Programme (NWCSP).

As you may be aware, the NWCSP worked with seven initial pilot sites (First Tranche Implementation Sites – ‘FImpS’) to implement the Lower Limb Recommendations (made up of the Leg Ulcer and Foot Ulcer Recommendations) and to test the assumptions of the Implementation Business Case. The FImpS are organisations of different sizes and structures providing NHS care who implemented the Lower Limb Recommendations and gained learning that it is hoped can be applied to other healthcare settings to help improve lower limb care on a wider scale.

We are happy to share that findings and recommendations from this evaluation reflect significant improvement in patient outcomes and establish a national benchmark for best practices.

To highlight some findings in the report:

·       52% of leg ulcers healed at 0-12 weeks, greatly exceeding the baseline – with an overall healing rate of 84% at 52 weeks for all lower limb wounds.

·       14% recurrence rate for leg ulceration, which is significantly lower than the implementation case assumption.

·       27.6 benefit-cost ratio based on outcomes achieved, suggesting a strong economic case for adoption of dedicated lower limb wound care services

·       Estimated net zero impact from patients receiving optimal care: 473,305kg of CO2 emissions, equivalent to 277 cars driven in a year.

The findings and recommendations in this report reflect the incredible output achieved through the lower limb workstream. It also shows the hard work put in by the NWCSP team to engage with the pilot sites, ensuring the implementation of the recommendations and recording of data to achieve these rich results.

Kind regards,

The National Wound Care Strategy Team