POCATELLO — In its first opportunity to prove its caliber, the Portneuf Wound Care & Hyperbaric Clinic at Portneuf Medical Center has met criteria that places it within the top 10 percent among the more than 500 such operations within the Healogics network.

    Healogics is a driving force in developing wound care treatment and prevention techniques and boasts an association of more than 500 wound centers throughout the U.S., including PMC’s center. The company also has established benchmarks for patient satisfaction, healing times and healing rates, to which its members strive to meet.

    Lynn McLeod, an area vice president for Healogics who was in Pocatello on Wednesday, said those centers in their network are judged on their ability to meet those benchmarks over a two-year period. This was the first such period that PMC’s Portneuf Wound Care & Hyperbaric Clinic was judged in relation to those benchmarks.

    “This center is one of only 41 centers in our network of centers receiving this award today,” McLeod said, referring to the Robert A. Warner III Center of Excellence Ward, which is given to those centers that meet the benchmarks over that two-year period.

    McLeod told those in attendance at the Portneuf Wound Care & Hyperbaric Clinic that PMC’s operation achieved patient satisfaction of 94 percent, above Healogics minimum requirement of 92 percent, had a median healing time of 24 days, well under the 30-day benchmark, and a healing rate of 93 percent against a benchmark of 91 percent.

    “It’s very rare that a center receives this award during their first full two years of operation,” McLeod said later. “I don’t know the exact figures on how many have done it, but it’s very unusual because the requirements are very stringent.”

    Accepting the award on behalf of PMC was John Abreu, the hospital’s chief financial officer and interim chief executive officer.

    “The thing that we like best about this partnership is that Healogics represents the things that we think we do the best, and that is great patient satisfaction and phenomenal outcomes,” Abreu said. “This program has both of those and we feel as a health system, we have that as well. I am looking forward to great things in the future between Healogics and Portneuf Medical Center.”

    Brad Reynolds, program director for the Portneuf Wound Care & Hyperbaric Clinic, said limb salvation, ensuring the wound is healed and the limb is not lost, is the goal of their operation.

    “We have had people like that, where they are close to losing a limb, and we have been able to save that limb,” Reynolds said of the clinic’s performance.