burn and reconstructive centers of america

If you have searched for serious burn care in the last 18 months, you have probably bumped into the name Burn and Reconstructive Centers of America. The chain is everywhere on hospital websites, on Healthgrades listings, and on local news stories about kitchen accidents and industrial fires. People sometimes confuse it with Wound and Burn Centers of America, which is a different organization. They are not the same. BRCA is a physician-led group based in Augusta, Georgia. It runs burn programs inside partner hospitals across roughly a dozen states. And it operates one of the largest hyperbaric oxygen therapy footprints in the burn-care world.

This guide breaks down what BRCA actually does, where its locations are, how its HBOT program fits into modern burn treatment, what the published evidence says about hyperbaric oxygen for burns, and how to think about the network if you or a family member is facing a serious burn injury in 2026. See the thermal burns evidence atlas for the full study-by-study evidence breakdown.

Quick Answer

BRCA is a physician group headquartered in Augusta, Georgia, with 15 partner-hospital locations across the United States as of 2026, anchored by the Joseph M. Still Burn Center at Doctors Hospital of Augusta — the largest single burn center in America.
Services include burn surgery, reconstructive surgery, hand and extremity reconstruction, scar revision, wound care, and hyperbaric oxygen therapy delivered inside hospital-grade monoplace and multiplace chambers.
HBOT inside the BRCA network is used as an adjunct for select burn indications, problem wounds, crush injuries, compromised flaps and grafts, and necrotizing soft tissue infections — not as a standalone burn cure.
Most BRCA HBOT sessions billed under the 14 UHMS-approved indications are covered by Medicare, Medicaid, and major commercial insurers when documented appropriately.

Medical Disclaimer and Affiliate Disclosure

This article is for general information only. It is not medical advice, and it is not a substitute for evaluation by a qualified physician. Burn injuries are time-sensitive and can be life-threatening. If you or someone near you has a serious burn, call 911 or go to the nearest emergency department. Decisions about hyperbaric oxygen therapy, surgery, grafting, and follow-up care should be made between a patient and a licensed clinician who has examined the wound in person.

HBOT Finder is a directory and editorial site. Some links in this article point to clinics in our directory, and some point to product pages where we may earn a commission if you make a purchase. That commission never changes what we recommend. We do not accept payment for inclusion in our directory or for editorial coverage. Our priority is helping you find safe, evidence-based hyperbaric care.

Who BRCA Actually Is

Burn and Reconstructive Centers of America is a privately held physician-services company. Unlike a hospital system that owns buildings and beds, BRCA partners with existing hospitals and embeds its surgeons, advanced practice providers, nurses, and therapists inside those hospitals. The hospital usually retains ownership of the bricks and mortar, the inpatient unit, and the licensure. BRCA brings the burn-trained clinical staff, the protocols, the outcomes-tracking infrastructure, and the network referral pathways.

This model matters when you are trying to understand the brand. Walking into a hospital that lists "BRCA" on its signage does not mean the hospital is owned by BRCA. It means the burn program inside that hospital is staffed and run by BRCA physicians. The same physicians may rotate to other partner hospitals or fly out to consult on transferred patients. It is closer to the way Mednax used to operate in neonatology than to the way HCA operates as a hospital owner.

The Augusta Anchor

The flagship facility is the Joseph M. Still Burn Center at Doctors Hospital of Augusta in Georgia. This is the largest single burn center in America by bed count and admission volume. It treats thousands of burn patients per year, including pediatric and adult cases, and it is a Level I-equivalent burn destination for much of the southeastern United States. BRCA grew out of this center. The Joseph M. Still Burn Center has been operating in Augusta since the early 1980s, and the BRCA brand was formalized in the 2010s as the group expanded to other states.

If you live in the southeast and you sustain a major burn — anything over 20 percent total body surface area, anything involving the face, hands, feet, genitalia, or major joints, or any high-voltage electrical injury — there is a strong chance you will end up at JMS in Augusta or at one of the other BRCA partner sites. Air-medical transfer agreements connect the Augusta hub to regional hospitals across Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Alabama, Tennessee, and beyond.

The 15-Location Footprint

As of 2026, BRCA lists roughly 15 partner-hospital locations on its corporate site. These include sites in Georgia, South Carolina, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and several other states. The exact map shifts as BRCA signs new partnership agreements and as some hospitals expand their burn beds. The current locations page at burncenters.com is the most reliable source for the up-to-date list. Each partner site offers a slightly different mix of services. Not every location has an HBOT chamber. Not every location has a 24/7 burn intensive care unit. The Augusta flagship has the deepest service line, including pediatric burn ICU, reconstruction, and outpatient HBOT.

Services Offered Across the Network

The full BRCA service menu includes acute burn surgery (escharotomy, fasciotomy, debridement, skin grafting), reconstructive surgery (scar release, contracture correction, tissue expansion, flap reconstruction), hand and upper extremity reconstruction, frostbite treatment (including a structured warm-water rewarming and tPA protocol that has gained traction in cold-region emergency departments), microvascular surgery, laser scar revision, wound care for chronic and complex wounds, and hyperbaric oxygen therapy. Pediatric and adult care are both within scope. Outpatient follow-up clinics handle long-term scar maturation, pressure-garment fitting, and physical and occupational therapy referrals.

How HBOT Fits Into Burn Care at BRCA

Hyperbaric oxygen therapy is not a primary treatment for burns. Surgery, fluid resuscitation, infection control, nutrition, and rehabilitation are the foundations of modern burn care, and that has not changed in 2026. What HBOT does is sit alongside those foundations as an adjunct for very specific situations.

When BRCA Uses HBOT

The Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society (UHMS) maintains a list of 14 approved indications for hyperbaric oxygen therapy. Several of those indications come up often in a burn-center setting. Thermal burns are themselves a UHMS-approved indication, although the evidence base is more mixed than for some other indications and most burn programs reserve HBOT for selected severe cases. More commonly, BRCA uses HBOT for compromised skin grafts and flaps when a graft is not taking the way it should, for crush injuries when there is a risk of compartment syndrome and tissue death, for necrotizing soft tissue infections such as Fournier gangrene and necrotizing fasciitis as a surgical adjunct, for problem wounds in diabetic patients with refractory ulcers, and for delayed radiation injury in patients with prior radiation therapy who develop chronic wound breakdown. See the necrotizing soft tissue infections evidence atlas for the full study-by-study evidence breakdown.

For a deeper breakdown of which indications insurance actually pays for, our HBOT Insurance Coverage in 2026: 14 Approved Indications Decoded guide walks through the documentation requirements line by line.

Hospital-Grade Chambers, Not Soft-Shell

Every BRCA location that offers hyperbaric oxygen therapy uses hospital-grade chambers. That means rigid steel monoplace chambers pressurized to 2.0 to 2.4 atmospheres absolute (ATA), or in some sites multiplace chambers that can hold several patients and an attendant at once. These are the chambers used for the UHMS-approved indications, and they are the only chambers that Medicare, Medicaid, and commercial insurers pay for under those indications. They are different from the soft-shell chambers that have become popular in wellness clinics and home settings, which top out around 1.3 to 1.5 ATA and are not approved for burn or wound indications. If you are trying to understand the difference, our Mild HBOT vs Hospital-Grade HBOT: 2026 Treatment Decision Guide breaks down the pressure, oxygen, and indication differences in plain language.

The Augusta flagship operates a multi-chamber hyperbaric department that can run multiple monoplace dives simultaneously. A typical session lasts 90 to 120 minutes at depth, plus compression and decompression time. Patients with acute burn or graft indications often receive once-daily or twice-daily sessions for 10 to 30 total dives, depending on the indication and the response.

Outpatient Versus Inpatient HBOT

Inpatient HBOT at BRCA is for patients who are admitted to the burn unit. They receive their dives as part of their daily care plan, often in the first one to two weeks after surgery. Outpatient HBOT is for patients who have been discharged but still need ongoing therapy — typically for compromised grafts, chronic wounds, or radiation injury. Outpatient patients drive in for their dives during business hours and usually complete a 20 to 40 session course over a few weeks. Insurance pre-authorization is handled by the BRCA team for both settings.

What the Evidence Says About HBOT for Burns

This is the part of the conversation where you have to be careful, because there is a real gap between what HBOT marketing claims and what published research actually supports. Here is the honest summary.

Thermal Burns: Mixed Evidence

A 2020 Cochrane review of HBOT for thermal burns concluded that the evidence is too limited to draw firm conclusions about whether HBOT improves overall mortality, wound healing time, or scar outcomes for thermal burns as a category. The studies that exist are mostly small, mostly older, and mostly focused on partial-thickness burns. That does not mean HBOT does not help. It means the randomized controlled trial evidence is not strong enough yet to make HBOT a routine part of every burn admission. Most modern burn centers, including BRCA, use HBOT selectively for cases where the clinical team believes there is a compromised tissue bed, a borderline graft, or a comorbidity (such as diabetes or vascular disease) that puts healing at risk.

Compromised Grafts and Flaps: Stronger Signal

The evidence for HBOT in compromised grafts and flaps is stronger. Multiple case series and a smaller number of randomized trials show that hyperbaric oxygen can salvage flaps and grafts that are showing early signs of failure due to ischemia or venous congestion. The mechanism is straightforward: dissolved oxygen at hyperbaric pressure can reach tissue through plasma even when red blood cell flow is impaired, and the resulting oxygen gradient supports angiogenesis and fibroblast activity. UHMS lists compromised flaps and grafts as an approved indication, and Medicare covers it.

Necrotizing Soft Tissue Infections: Surgical Adjunct

For necrotizing fasciitis and other necrotizing soft tissue infections, the evidence is observational rather than randomized — these are too rare and too lethal to study with traditional RCTs — but case series suggest that HBOT as an adjunct to aggressive surgical debridement and antibiotics is associated with lower mortality. BRCA's burn centers, which often manage these infections, will typically initiate HBOT within 24 hours of the first surgical debridement when a chamber is available.

Crush Injuries and Compartment Syndrome

A small randomized trial published in 1996 by Bouachour et al. showed that HBOT for severe crush injuries (Gustilo III) reduced wound complications and the need for repeat surgery. This study still gets cited because nothing larger has been published since. UHMS lists crush injury as an approved indication, and BRCA uses HBOT in this setting when patients are referred quickly enough.

What BRCA Does Not Claim

BRCA's clinical communications, in our review, are appropriately conservative. They do not claim HBOT cures burns, reverses scarring, or replaces surgery. They use HBOT as part of a multimodal burn-care program. That is the right posture given the current evidence base. Patients who are looking for HBOT for off-label conditions like long COVID or traumatic brain injury — both of which have their own emerging research base — should look at dedicated centers rather than burn centers. Our HBOT for Long COVID in 2026: Where Studies Stand review covers that landscape separately.

Pricing and Insurance Coverage in 2026

This is the question every patient asks first, and the answer is more complicated than a single number. Pricing depends on whether you are inpatient or outpatient, which insurance you carry, whether your indication is on the UHMS approved list, and which BRCA partner hospital is treating you.

Sticker Price Per Session

Hospital-grade HBOT in 2026 is typically billed at $400 to $1,800 per session at most US hospital outpatient departments. The midpoint for an outpatient burn-center HBOT session at a BRCA partner hospital is in the $800 to $1,200 range. Inpatient HBOT is bundled into the broader inpatient burn-care charge and is not billed separately to the patient in most cases. A standard outpatient course of 20 to 40 sessions, before insurance, can therefore range from $16,000 on the low end to $72,000 on the high end. Patients almost never pay sticker price out of pocket if they have insurance.

Insurance Reality

Medicare covers HBOT for the UHMS-approved indications when documentation requirements are met. Medicaid coverage varies by state but generally follows Medicare rules. Major commercial insurers (BCBS, Aetna, UnitedHealthcare, Cigna) cover HBOT for the same approved indications, with prior authorization required for most. The BRCA team handles prior auth in-house, which is one of the operational reasons hospitals partner with BRCA — managing HBOT pre-auth across 14 indications is a specialized administrative function, and small wound-care departments often struggle with denial rates.

Comparison Table: BRCA HBOT vs Other Settings

Setting	Pressure (ATA)	Indications Covered	Typical Cost per Session	Insurance Coverage
BRCA hospital outpatient HBOT	2.0 to 2.4	All 14 UHMS-approved	$800 to $1,200	Yes, with prior auth
Standalone wound-care chain HBOT	2.0 to 2.4	All 14 UHMS-approved	$400 to $900	Yes, with prior auth
Wellness clinic mild HBOT	1.3 to 1.5	None UHMS-approved	$80 to $250	No, almost always cash
Home soft-shell chamber	1.3 to 1.5	None UHMS-approved	$5,000 to $15,000 (purchase)	No

If you are weighing whether to invest in a soft-shell chamber for at-home wellness use rather than going through a hospital program, our Soft-Shell HBOT Chambers Under $10,000 Compared: Real-World 2026 Buyer Guide walks through the actual purchase decision.

Pros and Cons of Choosing a BRCA Center

Pros

Specialization. You get burn-trained surgeons, nurses, and therapists who do this work all day every day. For a major burn, this depth matters more than almost any other factor.
Volume. The Augusta flagship is the largest single burn center in America. High volume correlates with better outcomes for complex injuries — this is well established in the surgical-outcomes literature for cardiac surgery, trauma, and cancer, and burn care follows the same pattern.
Coordinated care continuum. BRCA's model covers acute care, reconstruction, scar management, and long-term rehab in one network. You are not bouncing between unrelated specialists.
Insurance handling. Prior authorization for HBOT and reconstruction is managed in-house, which lowers denial risk.
Air transfer agreements. If you are injured far from a burn center, BRCA's transfer pathways to Augusta and other hubs are well-established.

Cons

Geographic gaps. With 15 locations, BRCA does not cover every state. If you live in the Mountain West, the Pacific Northwest, or much of New England, the nearest BRCA center may be a flight away.
HBOT availability varies. Not every BRCA partner site has a hyperbaric chamber. Confirm before you assume.
Hospital-system layered billing. Because BRCA partners with hospitals, you may receive separate bills from the hospital and from the BRCA physician group. This is normal but can be confusing.
Conservative HBOT use. If you are looking for aggressive HBOT protocols for off-label conditions (TBI, long COVID, anti-aging), BRCA is not the right fit. They use HBOT for approved indications only.

Comparison With Other Hyperbaric Settings

For context, the BRCA model sits at one end of a spectrum. At the other end you have wellness-focused HBOT clinics like OxygenWell, Sports Rehab LA, and ila Only Spa, which serve a different patient population — generally healthy adults seeking recovery, performance, or longevity benefits at lower pressures. In between sit hospital-based programs at academic medical centers like Penn Medicine and outpatient hospital-affiliated programs like MD Hyperbaric Memorial Houston. BRCA is most directly comparable to the latter group: hospital-grade, indication-driven, insurance-covered. If you are an athlete looking at HBOT for recovery, our HBOT for Athletes: NFL, NBA, MLB Player Protocols Decoded for 2026 guide compares the wellness side of the market.

What a Treatment Course Looks Like

If you end up in a BRCA program for a serious burn, here is roughly how the timeline unfolds. Specifics vary, but this is the rhythm.

Day Zero to Day Three: Stabilization

You arrive in an emergency department. If your burn meets American Burn Association referral criteria — partial thickness over 10 percent TBSA, full thickness, face/hands/feet/genitalia, electrical, chemical, inhalation, comorbidities — you are transferred to a burn center. At a BRCA partner hospital, you go through fluid resuscitation (Parkland or modified Brooke formulas), pain control, airway assessment, and initial debridement. If you need an escharotomy or fasciotomy to relieve pressure, it happens in the first hours. HBOT is not typically used in the first 24 hours unless there is a specific indication like a crush component or a developing necrotizing infection.

Day Three to Day Fourteen: Surgical Phase

Excision of dead tissue and split-thickness skin grafting happen over multiple operative trips to the OR. Daily wound care continues. If a graft starts to look compromised — pale, dusky, slow to take — the team may add HBOT once or twice daily for 5 to 14 sessions to support graft survival. Nutritional support (often via tube feeds for large burns), physical therapy to prevent contractures, and infection surveillance run in parallel.

Day Fourteen to Discharge: Healing and Rehab

As grafts mature and infection risk drops, the focus shifts to rehab. You move out of intensive care, then eventually home. Outpatient follow-up begins for scar management, pressure garments, range-of-motion therapy, and any further reconstructive surgery that gets scheduled in the months ahead. Outpatient HBOT for problem wounds or radiation-related complications continues at this stage if indicated.

Months Three to Twenty-Four: Reconstruction and Scar Maturation

Major scar revision, contracture release, and reconstructive surgery typically wait until scars have matured (usually 12 to 18 months post-injury). BRCA's reconstructive surgeons handle this work. Laser scar revision (pulsed dye, fractional CO2) is woven in across this period. Pediatric patients often need staged reconstruction as they grow.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is BRCA the same as Wound and Burn Centers of America?

No. They are different organizations. Burn and Reconstructive Centers of America is headquartered in Augusta, Georgia, and partners with about 15 hospitals nationwide for inpatient and outpatient burn care, including hyperbaric oxygen therapy. Wound and Burn Centers of America is a separately branded outpatient wound care chain with a different ownership structure and a different clinical focus. The names are confusingly similar, but the services, locations, and physicians do not overlap. Always confirm which organization is treating you before signing intake paperwork.

Does my insurance cover HBOT at a BRCA location?

In most cases, yes — provided the indication is on the UHMS-approved list and prior authorization is obtained. Medicare and Medicaid both cover HBOT for the 14 approved indications. Major commercial insurers (BCBS, Aetna, Cigna, UnitedHealthcare) cover the same indications with pre-auth. BRCA handles pre-authorization in-house, which improves approval rates compared to smaller clinics. Off-label uses — long COVID, TBI, anti-aging — are not covered by insurance at BRCA or anywhere else, and BRCA does not market itself for those uses.

How long does an HBOT course at BRCA take?

It depends on the indication. Inpatient HBOT for an acute compromised graft might be 5 to 14 sessions over one to two weeks, often twice daily. Outpatient HBOT for chronic wounds, radiation injury, or post-graft maintenance is typically 20 to 40 sessions over four to eight weeks, once daily on weekdays. Necrotizing soft tissue infections receive emergent HBOT, often 2 to 3 sessions per day for the first 48 hours, then daily until clinical resolution. Your treating physician will set the exact schedule based on your indication and your response.

Can I go to BRCA if I do not have a burn?

The network treats more than burns. BRCA centers see chronic wounds, diabetic foot ulcers, radiation injuries, necrotizing infections, frostbite, hand injuries, and other complex wound and reconstructive cases. If your primary issue is a non-healing diabetic ulcer or a radiation-related complication, BRCA is a reasonable referral. If your primary issue is wellness, recovery, or off-label HBOT use, you are better served by a clinic focused on that side of the market.

How do I know if my injury qualifies for transfer to a BRCA center?

The American Burn Association publishes referral criteria that most emergency departments follow: partial-thickness burns greater than 10 percent of total body surface area, full-thickness burns of any size, burns to the face, hands, feet, genitalia, perineum, or major joints, electrical or chemical burns, inhalation injury, burns in patients with significant comorbidities, and burns with concomitant trauma. If you meet any of these criteria, your ED will likely initiate transfer to the nearest accredited burn center, which in many regions is a BRCA partner site. You do not need to arrange the transfer yourself — your treating physician will coordinate it.

Bottom Line

Burn and Reconstructive Centers of America is one of the most established burn-care networks in the United States, headquartered in Augusta and built around the Joseph M. Still Burn Center at Doctors Hospital — the largest single burn center in the country. Its hyperbaric oxygen program is conservative, indication-driven, and integrated with the broader burn-care continuum. It is not the right destination for off-label HBOT seekers, but for patients facing serious burns, complex wounds, or reconstructive needs in the 14 UHMS-approved indication categories, BRCA represents one of the deepest clinical benches available in 2026. Its 15-location footprint, in-house insurance navigation, and physician-led model are real differentiators relative to smaller wound-care chains.

If you are evaluating BRCA for yourself or a family member, the practical steps are simple: confirm whether your nearest BRCA partner site has a hyperbaric chamber if HBOT is part of your expected treatment, ask about prior-authorization handling for your specific insurance plan, and verify that your indication is on the UHMS-approved list. For everything else — wellness, recovery, longevity, off-label conditions — look elsewhere.