Treatment VS Prevention
It is expensive to treat pressure ulcers!
According to the literature, it costs 17,000 to 34,000 Euro to treat a major pressure ulcer. Below 5% of this amount is the cost of bandages, wound care products, pressure relief ect., The rest of the amount is the cost of hospitalization and care. Basically, the majority of the spending time is spent by caregivers who are already in a hurry.
It makes sense to use resources for prevention in the light of the above.
To believe that time or money is saved, by for example. not assessing a patient for pressure ulcer risk or using a relieving product preventive is completely wrong.
When a pressure ulcer occurs due to lack of preventive action, all that has been saved is lost many times.
For the amount it costs to treat a Category 3 pressure ulcer *, you can buy 1000 Levabo cushions, which you can instead use for prevention.
In our society there are more elderly people, more diabetes patients and more overweight, which means that there will be more pressure ulcers, with huge healthcare costs, unless we focuses much more on prevention. Prevention costs less than 1/10 of what treatment costs.
Levabo’s cushions are cheap, efficient, lightning-fast to use, takes up very little space so they are easy to have at the depot or in the car if you are a home nurse. One-patient application provides top hygiene, no cleaning, throw it out after application, it’s actually cheaper than cleaning a “regular” pressure-reducing cushion if it can be done at all.
In home care, the Levabo cushions are quite brilliant for having in the car, for example in the Levabo dcubi Kit bag that contains a pump and a selection of cushions. This allows a home nurse to enter a pressure prevention program immediately on suspicion of the risk of pressure ulcers.
This way You do not have to pick up and bring products to and from the depot with subsequent cleaning, this transport back and forth is significantly more expensive than using a Levabo cushion.
Similarly, the quick action is crucial, a pressure ulcer may occur in 2-4 hours, so it should be instantly looked after!
Contact Levabo for more information on how your department can start.
Here you can download Levabo Calculator, try your own numbers and see what you can save. Levabo Calculator is a pdf form to open in Adobe Acrobat Reader reader to work.
* Average rate of treatment Source Dealey Report 2012