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2025 CMS Payment Update Highlights
Physician Fee Schedule Overview:
The conversion factor has decreased from $33.29 to $32.35 (2.8$) for CY2025. This basically negates the 2.93% increase in CY 2024.
Extended several telehealth waivers through 2025.
Direct supervision expanded to include audio/video r...
Hyperbaric Device Safety: The Fundamentals of Tech Specs & Regulatory Compliance
Regulatory compliance for a medical device manufacturer is a process that continually evolves for the device's lifecycle. In the hyperbaric industry, the ASME: American Society of Mechanical Engineers is the author of the pressure vessel construction standards. In 1911, the American Society...
Happy 40th Birthday to the Baromedical Nurses Association!!
2025 will be the 40th year of the Baromedical Nurses Association! The BNA will celebrate this exciting event at the annual Hyperbaric Nurses Day in April! All are welcome to join us for great presentations and free CEUs for BNA members, which are offered at a fee of $15.00 for non-BNA...
Update from the Multicenter Hyperbaric Outcomes Registry
Data from the Multicenter Registry were used to challenge the conclusions of a recently published paper in Retina on the treatment of central retinal artery occlusion (CRAO) with HBO2.
The article by Kalaw et al., Evaluation of Retinal Artery Occlusion and its Visual Systemic Prognosis after Hyp...
Alliance of Wound Care Stakeholders Summaries of CY 2025 CMS Final Rules: Physician Fee Schedule, Hospital Outpatient PPS, Home Health PPS- Updated Nov 6 2024
UPDATED – While the Alliance is working on providing our members with a more detailed summary of these final rules, we wanted to provide this update as a result of incorrect information being placed in the original November 1, 2024 summary. The bolded language is new.
All of the CY 2025 final Me...
2024 Annual Awards
The Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society presents yearly awards to select individuals recognized for their significant contributions to the specialty of undersea and hyperbaric medicine.
2024 Recipients
The Albert R. Behnke Award Lindell K. Weaver, MD, FU...
BNA Column - 3rd Quarter 2024
The Baromedical Nurses Association held its general meeting at the UHMS Annual Scientific Meeting in New Orleans in June 2024. The BNA luncheon was well attended, and many joined virtually. Shannon Holland, vice president; Toia Whitacker Picket Jr., director at large; and Tyler Kennet, BNACB, wer...
Safety Director, Hyperbaric Safety Director, or Hyperbaric Safety Coordinator – is there a difference?
When the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) published the NFPA 99 Health Care Facilities Code 2024 (2023), the designation of Safety Director received two significant updates from prior editions – the addition of "Hyperbaric" and replacing of "Director" with "Coordinator" (NFPA.org).
In...
Update from the Multicenter Registry for Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy
Outcome data from the Multicenter Registry for Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy were well represented at the 2024 UHMS Annual Scientific Meeting this past June in New Orleans. Three poster presentations came from registry data. Additionally, Dr. Jay Buckey, director of the Center for Hyperbaric Medicine...
Article Request Service Available to UHMS Member
As part of a longstanding relationship between the Duke University Medical Center Library & Archives and the Society, UHMS members are able to use the Library’s article request service. UHMS members may request copies of journal articles and book chapters from the Library’s collections for an...
Advancing Dive Medicine and Safety: DAN at UHMS ASM 2024
In June 2024, DAN representatives shared their medical expertise at the Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society’s Annual Scientific Meeting (UHMS ASM). In addition to reinforcing DAN’s commitment to enhancing dive safety through research and education, our participation in the conference also h...
Multicenter Registry Update for Q2 2024
Publications:
A study on radiation cystitis using registry results is now in publication in the Journal of Urology - Patient Reported Outcome Measures Following Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy for Radiation Cystitis: Early Results From the Multicenter Registry for Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy. Moses RA...
BNA Column -2nd quarter 2024
This is an excellent year for the Baromedical Nurses Association! Hyperbaric Nurses Day – April 6 (our 8th year) was a success with over 70 attendees! Great interaction with the presenters and attendees provided further insight, critical thinking, and personal experience regarding cli...
Chamber Bulletin: Earthquake Guidelines
For internal education only. Posted with permisson by RestorixHealth
Special Article: Sealab III (1969): The Divers' Story
The Journal of Diving History: Second Quarter 2024 | Volume 32 | Number 119 Article Author: Kevin Hardy
Passings
Theodorus Aloysius Marie "Dick" van der Vaart
The passing of colleague and founder of the Recompression Chamber Bonaire
Dr. van der Vaart is remembered dearly by the many people he has touched. He was one of the busiest GPs on the island, from when there were only ...
Baromedical Nurses Association Update
The Baromedical Nurses Association Board of Directors met to include all BNA members. The BNA meeting notes as presented by Dana Winn, current BNA President:
Hyperbaric Nurses Day April 6, 2024: 11am-3pm EST
The BNA invites you to join us for our annual Hyperbaric Nurses Day! We hav...
In Memoriam Dr. Dirk Jan Bakker, MD, PhD
On 10th December dr Dirk Jan Bakker passed away on the age of 83.
Dr. Bakker was a general and transplant surgeon, trained by Professor Boerema and Professor Brummelkamp and therefore he gained great interest in hyperbaric and diving medicine. His PhD thesis was “The Influence of Hyperbaric Oxy...
Is this medical device safe to be in the chamber?: An introduction to the Medical Device Approval document
Author Bio: Kevin P Gardner serves as the Hyperbaric Safety Director at Aurora St. Luke’s Medical Center in Milwaukee, WI, overseeing the maintenance and safety of a large Fink Engineering multiplace hyperbaric chamber. He also serves as a member of the NFPA 53 technical committee, the UHMS Hyper...
Use of Registry data to study HBO2 use, outcomes, and adverse events
A study by Kinjal Sethuraman, MD (University of Maryland) et a, highlighting the need for increased availability of emergency HBO2 treatment facilities, was submitted for presentation at the annual meeting of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine (SAEM) scheduled for May of 2024. Dr. Seth...
Dick Clarke is the 2023 Recipient of the Prestigious DAN Lifetime Achievement Award
Richard (Dick) Clarke, a prominent leader in the hyperbaric oxygen and diving community, received the prestigious and well-deserved Lifetime Achievement Award from Divers Accident Network (DAN) in November of 2023. Dick has been making contributions to this community since enlisting in the Brit...
Medical Device Approval Process Form
CLICK HERE FOR THE FORM
DESCRIPTION OF MEDICAL DEVICE APPROVAL PROCESS – CLASS ‘A' MULTIPLACE CHAMBERS
PURPOSE
The following Medical Device Approval Process is a generic process that has been endorsed by the Hyperbaric Oxygen Safety Committee of the Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical ...
Multicenter Hyperbaric Outcomes Registry: 2023 Q4 Update
The Multicenter Registry for Hyperbaric Oxygen Treatment includes 26 centers that agree to enter standard outcome measures on all the patients they see. These data are being published to inform the medical community about the uses of hyperbaric oxygen treatment and the outcomes.
Recent M...
Prohibited Item Risk Assessment
Introduction
What is the rationale behind having a prohibited items assessment/checklist for each hyperbaric unit? The hyperbaric safety program forms the cornerstone of every hyperbaric medicine service, offering essential guidance to identify and mitigate the potential risks and hazards associ...
A Message from the Safety Committee
“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
Not just in human health but in the life of your hyperbaric equipment, a preventative maintenance program keeps your systems running efficiently, economically, and most importantly safely.
Preventative maintenance is the act of performing regul...
Multicenter Hyperbaric Outcomes Registry: 2023 Q3 Update
The Multicenter Hyperbaric Outcomes Registry collects a defined set of outcome measures for all 14 UHMS-approved, and for some emerging hyperbaric oxygen treatment indications. The registry is a consortium of participating treatment centers. All participating sites use the same Research Electroni...
Remarks from Dr. Michael Strauss upon receiving the 2023 UHMS Behnke Award
June 18, 2023, San Diego, California
It is indeed a great honor to receive the premier award of the Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society. Dr. Behnke, although retired at the time, was a willing audience for my novel ideas about diving medicine upon my entry into the Navy 56-years ago. His ins...
Care of the Forensic Patient in Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy
A forensic patient is one who is under the legal custody of law enforcement or correction facility. The United States has over 2 million individuals who are incarcerated.1 Of these individuals, 800,000 were found to have chronic conditions requiring medical care. Comparatively, incarcerated patie...
The Role of the RN in Hyperbaric Medicine
Background Hyperbaric oxygen therapy relies on a chamber operator as well as a supervising provider. The generally accepted industry standard is one chamber operator for every two hyperbaric chambers. Many programs train and develop chamber operators from a variety of clinical backgrounds includi...
Baromedical Nurses Association Newsletter
We invite you to the fun and exciting annual Baromedical Nurses Association Day It’s happening on April 15, 2023, for four hours of continuing education.
This is a great chance not only for education but to be interactive with the presentations. The BNA day is evolving each year, as are many of ...
When It’s Better to Be Under More Pressure
‘Mild hyperbaric’ facilities need to comply with standards or cease and desist until they can
The medical discipline of clinical hyperbaric medicine had its origins in the 1960s with seminal work done in both Holland and the United States. One of the early applications employed hyperbaric oxygen...