Reducing the Burden of Leg Ulcers

The Monash University ‘A call to action: decreasing venous leg ulcers by 50% in the next 10 years’ seminar, organised by Dr Carolina Weller, took place on the 15^th of August and was well received by the delegates. Delegates came from regional Victoria, interstate and New Zealand and consisted of geriatricians, vascular surgeons, wound nurse consultant, master of Wound Care post graduate students, senior health officers, health service officers and a general practitioner.

In his opening address, Minister David Davis, acknowledged that Venous Leg Ulcers (VLU) are a common and costly problem with variability in clinical practice and clinical outcomes. Minister Davis announced a $30, 000 seed funding grant to develop a pilot VLU registry (VLUR) that will be administered by Monash University School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine (SPHPM). The SPHPM houses several of Australia’s largest clinical quality registries. These include registries encompassing cancer, trauma, cardiac surgery, burns, intensive care and haematology. It is well supported by broad expertise and involvement in clinical medicine, whilst at the same time being independent of the major clinical providers.

The registry will provide monitoring and benchmark data, which is most appropriate when the conditions and procedures being assessed are those where patient outcomes are variable and where have the greatest capacity to improve quality of life and reduce costs.

The VLUR will be developed to align with generic operating principles and will provide potential for high quality population-based data to be collected and managed within a clinician-led framework. The proposed registry will provide a governance structure for data requests, collection, analysis and reporting of data managing outliers.