New skin does not come first. Here’s the order a wound heals in. The wound starts to fill in with new tissue, called granulation tissue. New skin begins to form over this tissue. As the wound heals, the edges pull inward and the wound gets smaller. New skin forms over the tissue that fills the wound. If the wound bed has not filled in, there is nothing yet for new skin to grow across.
That filling-in takes time. The rebuilding stage lasts the next 3 weeks or so. The smaller the wound, the quicker it will heal. The larger or deeper the wound, the longer it takes to heal. That’s also why a dressing is used at all. An open wound will heal from the inside to the outside. A dressing helps absorb drainage and keeps the skin from closing before the wound underneath fills in.
There is a point where slow becomes something else. A non-healing wound is one that has not started to heal in 2 weeks, or has not completely healed in 6 weeks. Those two marks are the most useful thing on this page, because they turn a worry into a date you can check against.
Many things can prevent wounds from healing or slow the process: infection, diabetes, poor blood flow, obesity, age, heavy alcohol use, stress, certain medicines — corticosteroids, NSAIDs and some chemotherapy medicines — and smoking. More than one of these can apply at the same time. Wounds that are slow to heal may need extra care from your provider.
There’s no cream, dressing or supplement recommended here to make new skin grow faster. In fact, the advice for an open wound is the opposite: do not put any lotion, cream, or herbal remedies on or around your wound, unless your provider has said it is OK. If a wound is not covering over, the question for your provider is what is holding it back — not what to put on it.