About the Alliance
We Elevate the Visibility, Voice & Influence of Wound Care.
Since its founding in 2002, the Alliance of Wound Care Stakeholders has served as the unified advocacy voice for the wound care community on regulatory and legislative policy issues. The Alliance uniquely enables the wound care community to collectively engage on issues of commonality, elevating the visibility and united voice of wound care to regulators and policy makers. We collaborate, educate and advocate to influence policy and ensure an appropriate and fair regulatory and legislative environment that supports quality wound care, evidence-based clinical practice and innovation in wound care.Our Mission:
Be the unified voice for the wound care community to ensure access to quality care for all patients with chronic wounds.
Our Focus:
With a laser focus on coding, coverage and payment policies impacting wound care, quality measures and wound care research, we educate policymakers and advocate on policy issues that create barriers to patient access to treatments or care. (Learn more)
Our Members:
The Alliance is a membership-based 501(c)(6) multidisciplinary association of physician specialty societies, clinical and patient associations, non-clinical associations, wound care provider groups, wound care clinics, business and support business entities, and professional services firms in the wound care field who work collaboratively together - and with CMS, FDA, other federal agencies and Capitol Hill - to inform policy, educate policymakers, ensure quality care, and protect access to products and services for patients with chronic wounds.
At the Intersection of Government, Health Policy & Wound Care, We Have a Seat at the Table.
As a united voice, we are stronger together to influence and shape policy change to create a regulatory and legislative environment that supports evidence-based clinical practice and innovation in wound care. We achieve this by:- Serving as a key go-to resource for CMS, FDA, and other federal entities on wound care issues, communicating frequently to share wound care clinical/technical expertise on relevant policies and alerting regulators about any access or equity impacts that evolving policies could have.
- Enabling productive dialogue with decisionmakers by convening meetings with members of Congress and their staff, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) senior staff, CMS contractors, DMEMAC and A/B MAC Medical Directors, the FDA, and other government stakeholders to elevate issues and share recommendations. Proactively educating policymakers on the complexities of wound care to foster clinically accurate policies.
- Monitoring, analyzing, and taking action on regulations/legislation that impact wound care; building member consensus on impacts and advocacy actions.
- Testifying at public meetings & advisory panels to elevate the wound care perspective by providing Alliance positions and recommendations as policies are developed, issued or updated.
- Persistently and proactively putting the wound care perspective “on the record” by submitting comments and recommendations to solve coverage, coding, payment and access issues that impact our members and the patients they serve; Mobilizing and facilitating submission of comment from individual members and other aligned experts to increase advocacy impacts.
- Updating members regularly with alerts about new and draft policies, anticipated impact, advocacy opportunities and how/when to take action; Serve as a resource to members to answer questions and build clarity on policies that affect them.
Advocacy Focus Areas:
Our advocacy focus areas span a range of product categories, plus critical and emergent issues/topics as determined by our members, including:- antimicrobial wound care dressings
- blood derived products
- cellular and/or tissue-based products for wounds (CTPs, or skin substitutes)
- coding, coverage and payment
- hyperbaric oxygen therapy
- imaging
- lymphedema
- negative pressure wound therapy
- pneumatic compression devices
- surgical dressings
- wound care quality measures
- wound care research
- and more
Hear from members, regulators, supporters and stakeholders about the activities, accomplishments and impact of the Alliance over the past two decades:
