The recently published ‘Burden of Wounds’ study (Guest et al, 2015a) not only highlighted the cost of delivering wound care in the UK but also revealed a number of shortcomings in the method of care delivery, many of which could potentially have adversely affected patient outcome. This paper looks more closely at some of the clinical and service issues raised by the published data from the study and combines this with observations made by the research team when reviewing the patient records to generate a number of recommendations for improvements in staff engagement, documentation, clinical management and service delivery. By implementing these recommendations variations in care standards should be reduced, delayed and nonhealing be recognised earlier and as a result cost savings generated.