The area’s largest provider of wound care services offers hope for patients with non-healing wounds.
The UnityPoint Health – Methodist I Proctor Center for Wound Care and Hyperbaric Medicine offers expert, comprehensive and specialized treatment for chronic or non-healing wounds. Its medical and clinical staff works with doctors to bring patients life-changing results, with a healing rate of 97.8 percent.
Accredited by the Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society, the Wound Care Center uses a physician-driven, interdisciplinary model of care, including a comprehensive approach to wound management utilizing the latest tools and traditional clinical practices. Individualized treatment plans can include specialized wound dressings, debridement, compression therapy, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, prescription growth factor medications, bio-engineered skin grafting and blood flow assessments.
Services are provided at two convenient campuses, easily accessible with free parking. Located at the beginning and end of one of Peoria’s most highly-traveled thoroughfares, the two centers are strategically aligned to serve the Tri-County region and beyond. In addition, the center at the Methodist Atrium provides free valet service.
A Team Effort
Dr. Pablo Perez has been working with the Methodist | Proctor Center for Wound Care and Hyperbaric Medicine since 2008. “It is both interesting and compelling,” he describes. “It’s often difficult for patients when I first see them. Many are unhappy and can no longer enjoy their life in the same way they were accustomed. As patients visit their Wound Center physician and staff, their relationship grows closer, and you begin to see a marvelous change. It’s a team effort, fulfilling on every level. To see once-concerned and unhappy people—many in pain—transformed and back to enjoying life and smiling again… it’s what drives me.”
Methodist I Proctor offers the area’s largest wound care and hyperbaric center, with five transparent and comfortable chambers, including three at the Methodist Atrium Center and two on the Proctor campus. Patients can watch television or listen to music during treatments. Medicare assignment is accepted and services approved by most insurance carriers, while vital information is provided on disease processes, treatments and services.
Comprehensive Team of Specialists
Designed to complement one’s physician’s services, the Center is comprised of a team of professionals that includes:
- A personalized wound treatment program
- Physicians with advanced training in wound management and hyperbaric oxygen therapy
- Certified hyperbaric technicians
- Nursing staff uniquely trained and certified in the care of chronic wounds
- Orthotic consultants to fit patients needing specialized footwear
- Technicians who perform non-invasive studies and various therapies
- Consultants to provide medical equipment when needed
- Experienced staff to assist with medical records and health insurance processing.
Chronic Wounds: A Growing Problem
Diabetes-related complications are a major cause of chronic wounds. Nearly 24 million Americans—one in 12—are diabetic, and the disease is causing widespread disability and death at an epidemic pace, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Of those with diabetes, more than eight million are estimated to suffer from chronic or non-healing wounds. Associated with inadequate circulation, poorly functioning veins and immobility, non-healing wounds occur most frequently in the elderly and in people with diabetes—populations that are sharply rising as the nation ages and chronic diseases increase.
Providers follow treatment protocols specifically established for each type of wound, utilizing the latest approaches and scientific advances in wound healing. If a wound has not decreased in size by half in a four-week timeframe, it will most likely not heal adequately and may need advanced wound therapy to complete the process.
Patients should be referred to the wound center when they have an infected wound, if the wound involves deep-tissue structures or is limb- or life-threatening, or if the wound is complicated with significant co-morbidities such as diabetes, peripheral vascular disease or COPD. Most patients are referred by their primary care physician, although self-reference is also possible. iBi
UnityPoint Health-Methodist is located at 900 Main St., Suite 210 in Peoria. UnityPoint Health-Proctor is located at 5409 N. Knoxville Ave. in Peoria. For more information, visit unitypoint.org/peoria.
