Wound Care Hall of Fame

Why Medipyxis Is Honoring the People Who Actually Move This Industry

Wound care doesn't get parades.

Cardiology gets the drama. Oncology gets the fundraising galas. Orthopedics gets the highlight reels. Wound care gets the patient nobody else wants to see — the one with the ulcer that won't close, the amputation that could have been prevented three visits ago, the Medicare denial that arrived faster than the healing.

And yet. Some of the smartest, most stubborn, most quietly heroic people in American healthcare have chosen wound care as their life's work. Not because it's glamorous. Because it matters.

This series exists to say their names out loud.

What the Wound Care Hall of Fame is

The Wound Care Hall of Fame is a running Medipyxis series profiling the clinicians, operators, entrepreneurs, and rabble-rousers who make this industry better every single day. Some run mobile practices in three states. Some sit in Missoula and build the technology the rest of us depend on. Some are DNPs turning debridements into national training programs. Some are sales leaders who could sell you a comforter in July but chose instead to spend twenty years placing wound imaging platforms in 900+ clinical sites.

If you're in wound care, you should know these people. If you want to be in wound care, you need to know them.

Why Medipyxis is doing this

We build software for mobile and post-acute wound care practices. Every line of code we ship, every rule in our Billing Brain, every alert in our Actions Inbox — all of it exists because a real clinician somewhere is standing over a real patient trying to do the right thing while five insurance carriers, three MACs, and a fee schedule update conspire against them.

We meet these people. We onboard them. We answer their late-night texts. And a pattern emerges: the wound care people who consistently deliver outcomes share a set of traits that has almost nothing to do with their credentials.

They are:

• Obsessed with patients in a way that makes their families roll their eyes.
• Fluent in the ugly parts — documentation, denials, MAC quirks, LCD changes, CTP pricing chaos — because they know clinical excellence dies without operational excellence.
• Generous with knowledge in an industry that historically hoards it.
• Slightly weird in the best possible way. Wound care attracts characters. That's part of why we love it.

This series is our way of pointing at them and saying: these are the ones. Learn from them. Refer to them. Do business with them. Steal their playbooks.

The uncomfortable truth about wound care

Let's be honest for a second, because you deserve honesty and because the FTC is watching.

Wound care is hard. It's hard on patients — because chronic wounds are hard on bodies, and denials are hard on hope. It's hard on clinicians — because the reimbursement rules change more often than the seasons, and one bad audit can end a practice. It's hard on families — because a non-healing wound doesn't stay in the clinic; it moves into the living room, the bedroom, the dinner table.

At Medipyxis we believe two things at the same time:

1. We focus on patients and outcomes. Full stop. That is the whole product strategy. Every roadmap decision, every rule in the eligibility resolver, every audit-defensibility gate — patient outcome is the tiebreaker.
2. It is not always easy. Not for us. Not for our customers. Not for the people we profile in this series. And anyone who tells you otherwise is either selling something or hasn't been in the room when a family is told the wound isn't closing.

The inductees in this Hall didn't pretend the hard parts don't exist. They walked toward the hard parts. That's what makes them worth honoring.

How the profiles are built

Every post in the Hall follows the same format so you can find what you need fast:

• The Rock Star Bio — who they are, in one sentence you'll actually remember.
• The Origin Story — how they got here (spoiler: never in a straight line).
• What They're Building Right Now — current company, current mission, current fight.
• Why You Need To Know Them — the concrete reason this person belongs in your rolodex.
• Something They Didn't Tell Me — a humanizing detail they might be surprised I dug up. Fair warning: I do my homework.
• The Signature Move — the one thing they do better than almost anyone in the industry.
• How To Work With Them — links, contact channels, best way in.
• The Legend Quote — something they've said in public that captures the whole person in one line.

I know every person in this Hall. Personally. I've been on calls with them, in trenches with them, cursing MAC decisions with them. I can honestly say I love these people. I love a lot of people I meet — that's on brand for me — but the ones inducted here set themselves apart with one word: passion.

You'll feel it in every profile.

The Inaugural Class

The first class of the Wound Care Hall of Fame includes eight people I hand-picked because their names should be spoken more often in this industry:

1. Jack Schlechtweg — Founder & Managing Partner, Flagstick Advisors. The commercial architect behind more wound care launches than most of us have attended. Also happens to do comedy on the side.
2. Nikki Johnston — CEO, Loden Health Partners; Founder/COO, Kindling Consulting. Fractional COO for wound care practices that outgrew "figuring it out." And, honest to God, one of the best-dressed people in healthcare.
3. Kati Kaushal, DNP, FNP-C, CWS — CEO, Kindling Clinical Consulting. The clinician who says the quiet part out loud: most wounds don't need ten products, they need ten minutes of critical thinking. If you want to get around landmines, you talk to Kati.
4. John Schroeder — CEO, Venture Medical. The Missoula, Montana operator running one of the country's most consequential advanced wound care distribution and technology platforms. Started with a car, a lunchbox, and no budget.
5. Hailey Caprara, RN BSN CWS DAPWCA — Founder, Halo Healing & Wound Care; Clinical Director, Heritage Wound Care. Compliance and compassion in the same breath. Still carries a full caseload while running two firms.
6. Todd Buster (coming soon) — National Sales Director, advanced wound care (Synergen / MiMedx alum). The Louisiana rep who has forgotten more about amniotic tissue than most of us will ever learn. Also the guy who calls you at 5 AM sharp because you said you'd take the call at 5 AM.
7. Matthew J. Davis, BSN, RN, CWON, CFCN — VP of Administration & Corporate Development, Shared Health Services; Senior Director of Medical Affairs, Surgenex. The wound and ostomy nurse turned MSL turned strategy leader who writes about the pain nobody sees — and shows up on every panel you go to.
8. Jennifer Bierhup, RN, WCC, CCM, DAPWCA, FACCWS, iRNPA — Founder & CEO, Libellen Wound Healing Consultants. Twenty years in wound care. Multiple patents. Trained under Barbara Braden, Dot Weir, and Nancy Morgan. Case management's answer to Age of Ultron — she is trying to make every home health nurse in America dangerous with knowledge.

Each of them gets their own post. Each of them earned it.

What you can do right now

• Follow this series. New inductees drop regularly.
• Nominate a legend. If we missed someone whose name you think should be in this Hall, nominate them here. Every real nomination gets a profile — future classes will be voted on by the wound care community, not hand-picked by me.
• Send this to a wound care person who needs to feel seen today. They exist. They're probably at a bedside right now. Give them one small win.

Wound care doesn't get parades. So we're going to throw one, one inductee at a time.

Welcome to the Wound Care Hall of Fame.

---

Damon Ebanks is the founder and CEO of Medipyxis, a wound care software platform built for mobile and post-acute practices. He personally knows every person inducted into this Hall and takes full responsibility for any inside jokes.