Attribute Schema Library
Attribute schemamedical & dental supply

Wound Care Attributes

Wound care spans general supplies — gauze sponges, adhesive bandages, tape — and advanced dressings: foams, hydrocolloids, alginates and gelling fibers, hydrogels, transparent films, collagen, contact layers, and the antimicrobial version of each. Buyers are hospital and IDN supply chains, long-term care and home health, wound clinics, and dental and physician offices. Selection is clinical: wound depth, drainage, periwound skin, and who is paying.

The data is hard for a specific reason. One product carries three size vocabularies — 10 cm x 10 cm on the carton, a 5 cm x 5 cm pad in the IFU, "4x4" in the distributor feed — and the HCPCS code hangs on the pad, not the carton. Shape (square, sacral, heel), border or no border, and silver or no silver multiply every family into dozens of SKUs. The numbers that actually separate them — absorptive capacity in g/100 cm², MVTR, maximum wear time — live in the IFU PDF and the clinical brochure.

What the supplier sends is a name, a pack quantity, and a paragraph of prose. The specs exist. They're in the PDF.

Core

Every SKU needs these. Without them the record is not a product, it is a row.

Dressing Type
enum
Foam

The first filter on every wound care rail. Determines moisture handling, wear time, and which HCPCS code family applies.

Pad Size
text · in (sq in)
4 in x 4 in (16 sq in)

The absorbent pad only, excluding the border. Drives HCPCS code selection and matches how clinicians actually order.

Overall Dimensions
text · in
6 in x 6 in

The full footprint including adhesive border. What has to fit on a heel, a sacrum, or under a brief.

Shape
enum
Sacral

Anatomic fit. Sacral, heel, and tracheostomy shapes are not substitutable with a square of the same area.

Border / Adhesive Type
enum
Silicone adhesive border

Splits the SKU tree and the HCPCS code (with vs without adhesive border). Also drives periwound skin trauma.

Wound Contact Layer
enum
Soft silicone

Silicone vs acrylic vs none decides atraumatic removal on fragile skin. A hard buyer requirement, not a preference.

Sterility / Sterilization Method
enum
Sterile (ethylene oxide)

Sterile vs non-sterile is a clinical gate; the method is a required GUDID attribute and flows through GDSN.

Selling Unit / Pack Configuration
text
Box of 10; case of 100 (10 bx)

Each, box, and case with conversion factors. Without it, price comparison and ERP item-master load both fail.

Manufacturer Part Number
identifier
MSC2066EPH

The number on the carton and on the PO. The join key between supplier feed, contract file, and item master.

GTIN (Each / Box / Case)
identifier
00884389012345 (GTIN-14, case)

One GTIN per packaging level. Required for GDSN, GUDID, marketplace listing, and scanning at the point of use.

Differentiating

What buyers actually compare on. This is where catalogs win or lose the filter.

Exudate Level
enum
Moderate to heavy

The clinical selection criterion. Light, moderate, or heavy drainage narrows the dressing choice before anything else.

Free Swell Absorptive Capacity
number · g/100 cm²
12 g/100 cm²

The comparable absorbency figure, tested to EN 13726. The only way to rank two foams without trialling them.

Maximum Wear Time
number · days
Up to 7 days

From the IFU. Drives changes per week, nursing time, and true cost per wound — none of which unit price shows.

Antimicrobial Agent
enum
Silver (ionic)

Silver, PHMB, cadexomer iodine, methylene blue/gentian violet, or honey. Formulary-restricted at many facilities.

Compliance & identifiers

Standards, regulatory data, and the identifiers channels reject you for missing.

HCPCS Code
identifier
A6212

Required by post-acute, home health, hospice, and DME buyers to confirm billability before they order.

UDI-DI / GUDID Listing
identifier
00884389012345

The FDA device identifier. Keys the GUDID record and flows to hospital item masters through GDSN.

Latex Statement
enum
Not made with natural rubber latex

Facilities with latex-allergy protocols require it on the record. FDA labeling guidance prescribes the wording.

Country of Origin
enum
Mexico

Tariff classification, customs entry, and federal and GPO sourcing rules.

The fields that aren't in the schema at all

What most wound care catalogs are missing.

The table above is the schema most catalogs already have. These are the attributes that usually aren't in it — each one surfaced by a signal from the live market rather than by an audit of what's already there. This is what Anglera's Schema Foundry does on a real catalog, in this category.

Competitor signal
+ Pad Size (exclusive of adhesive border)

CMS's own coding example: a hydrocolloid with 6 in x 6 in outside dimensions and a 4 in x 4 in pad codes on the pad. Distributor pages almost always publish only the outside dimension.

Home health and DME buyers can't derive the HCPCS code from the listing, so they call. Clinicians ordering "4x4" receive a 4x4 pad or a 4x4 overall — a coin flip.

Supplier signal
+ Free Swell Absorptive Capacity

Manufacturer IFUs and clinical brochures publish the g/100 cm² figure tested to EN 13726. Distributor listings compress it to "moderate to heavy", or drop it entirely.

No way to compare two foams on the one number that decides the case. The buyer defaults to the brand already stocked, or to the cheaper SKU.

Supplier signal
+ Maximum Wear Time

Every advanced dressing IFU states a maximum wear time — commonly up to 7 days. Almost no distributor catalog carries a wear-time field, so no rail exposes it.

Wear time drives total cost per wound, not unit price. Without it the category competes on each-price and the 7-day dressing loses to the 3-day one.

Search signal
+ HCPCS Code

Post-acute, home health, and hospice buyers confirm billability before ordering. They search the code — "A6212" — and a catalog with no HCPCS field returns zero results.

An entire buyer segment routes to a competitor whose rail has an HCPCS filter. The SKU is stocked, priced, and invisible.

Supplier signal
+ Latex Statement (governed wording)

Facilities with latex-allergy protocols require the statement in writing on the item record. Supplier feeds send "Latex Free", "LF", or nothing, and the field goes unpopulated.

Blank latex fields are rejected at GDSN publication and hospital item-master onboarding. The SKU never reaches the IDN contract catalog.

How Schema Foundry finds these

Messy in, governed out.

The same value, spelled every way medical & dental supply suppliers spell it. A filter only works once they agree.

Dressing Size
4x44" x 4"10cm x 10cm10 X 10CM4 IN X 4 IN4x4in
4 in x 4 in (10 cm x 10 cm)

Metric and imperial arrive from the same manufacturer on different documents. Also declare whether the figure is pad or overall.

Latex Statement
Latex FreeLatex-FreeNo LatexNRL FreeLFY
Not made with natural rubber latex

FDA labeling guidance rejects "latex free"; GUDID and hospital item masters expect the natural-rubber-latex construction.

Exudate Level
HeavyHighModerate-HeavyMod to HvyHighly Exuding3+
Heavy

Three governed levels (Light / Moderate / Heavy) make a rail filter. Free-text drainage adjectives make a search box.

Antimicrobial Agent
SilverAgIonic SilverNanocrystalline SilverAg+Silver Ion
Silver (ionic)

Suppliers name the chemistry six ways and bury it in the title. A governed field separates silver from PHMB, iodine, and honey.

What buyers ask

Every one of these should be answerable from the attributes above. If it isn't, that's a gap.

  • Is the 4x4 the pad size or the overall size with the border?
  • What HCPCS code does this dressing bill under?
  • How long can it stay on before it has to be changed?
  • How much drainage will it hold — enough for a heavily exuding ulcer?
  • Does this come in a sacral or heel shape?
  • Is there a version with a silicone contact layer but no adhesive border?
  • Is it sterile, and is it made with natural rubber latex?
  • Is that price per dressing or per box, and how many per case?

What channels require

The same SKU, different mandatory fields per destination.

GS1 Healthcare GDSN data pool / FDA GUDID
GTIN per packaging levelUDI-DIPackage hierarchy and quantitySterile-packaged flagSterilization methodNatural rubber latex statement
GPO / IDN contract catalog and hospital ERP
GTINManufacturer part numberUOM hierarchy with conversion factorsContract numberUNSPSCCountry of origin
Distributor's own site filter rail
Dressing typePad size and overall dimensionsShapeBorder / adhesive typeExudate levelHCPCS code
Amazon Business (Medical Supplies)
GTIN/UPCBrand and manufacturer part numberUnit count and unit count typeSterilityItem dimensionsProduct images

Wound Care data, in practice

Why carry pad size when we already publish the dressing dimensions?

HCPCS coding for a wound cover with an adhesive border is driven by the pad, not the outer border. CMS's own example: a hydrocolloid with 6 in x 6 in outside dimensions and a 4 in x 4 in pad surrounded by a 1 in border codes as A6237 — pad size 16 sq in or less — not as a larger code. The bands are ≤16 sq in, >16 to ≤48 sq in, and >48 sq in, each split by with or without adhesive border. A catalog carrying only the overall dimension cannot derive the code, cannot power a "4x4" filter that matches how clinicians ask for the product, and pushes the pad-versus-overall reconciliation onto the customer service desk.

Which absorbency number should we publish?

EN 13726 is the test standard suppliers actually cite (consolidated in the 2023 revision; previously split into parts). Part 1 covers free swell absorptive capacity — a 30-minute soak in test solution at 37 °C, reported in g/100 cm² — plus fluid handling capacity, which combines absorbency and moisture vapour loss using the Paddington cup method for dressings with an occlusive backing. Part 2 covers moisture vapour transmission rate of permeable film dressings, in g/m²/24 h. Publish the figure and the method that produced it. "Highly absorbent" is not a comparable value, and two suppliers will mean different things by it.

How should latex be worded?

FDA labeling guidance directs manufacturers away from "latex free" and "does not contain latex" — no test verifies the absence of all natural rubber latex proteins. The recommended construction is "Not made with natural rubber latex." GUDID carries a corresponding natural rubber latex attribute, so this is also the value that flows through GDSN into hospital item masters. Suppliers will keep sending "Latex Free", "LF", "No latex", "NRL free", and blank. Normalize to one governed value and retain the supplier's original string as provenance so the claim is traceable to its source document.

Does every SKU need an HCPCS code?

Every SKU a post-acute, home health, hospice, or DME buyer might purchase. Surgical dressing codes are assigned by dressing type and pad size band: A6196–A6199 alginate and other fiber gelling, A6209–A6215 foam, A6234–A6241 hydrocolloid, A6242–A6248 hydrogel, A6257–A6259 transparent film, A6021–A6024 collagen. Codes are per dressing, and a code is not a coverage guarantee — the Surgical Dressings LCD (L33831) governs payability. But a catalog with no HCPCS field loses those buyers to one that has the filter, regardless of stock position or price.

More medical & dental supply schemas

Dental HandpiecesDiagnostic EquipmentExam GlovesSurgical InstrumentsSyringes & Needles

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