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Lookup NU author(s): Professor Barbara HanrattyORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
© The Author(s) 2024.Background: A substantial number of Emergency Department (ED) attendances by care home residents are potentially avoidable. Health Call Digital Care Homes is an app-based technology that aims to streamline residents’ care by recording their observations such as vital parameters electronically. Observations are triaged by remote clinical staff. This study assessed the effectiveness of the Health Call technology to reduce unplanned secondary care usage and associated costs. Methods: A retrospective analysis of health outcomes and economic impact based on an intervention. The study involved 118 care homes across the North East of UK from 2018 to 2021. Routinely collected NHS secondary care data from County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust was linked with data from the Health Call app. Three outcomes were modelled monthly using Generalised Linear Mixed Models: counts of emergency attendances, emergency admissions and length of stay of emergency admissions. A similar approach was taken for costs. The impact of Health Call was tested on each outcome using the models. Findings: Data from 8,702 residents were used in the analysis. Results show Health Call reduces the number of emergency attendances by 11% [6–15%], emergency admissions by 25% [20–39%] and length of stay by 11% [3–18%] (with an additional month-by-month decrease of 28% [24–34%]). The cost analysis found a cost reduction of £57 per resident in 2018, increasing to £113 in 2021. Interpretation: The introduction of a digital technology, such as Health Call, could significantly reduce contacts with and costs resulting from unplanned secondary care usage by care home residents.
Author(s): Garner A, Lewis J, Dixon S, Preston N, Caiado CCS, Hanratty B, Jones M, Knight J, Mason SM
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Age and Ageing
Year: 2024
Volume: 53
Issue: 2
Print publication date: 01/02/2024
Online publication date: 13/02/2024
Acceptance date: 02/04/2018
Date deposited: 26/02/2024
ISSN (print): 0002-0729
ISSN (electronic): 1468-2834
Publisher: Oxford University Press
URL: https://doi.org/10.1093/ageing/afae004
DOI: 10.1093/ageing/afae004
Data Access Statement: Data was collected from CDDFT and stored in a Trusted Research Environment (TRE) managed by Durham University. Informed consent was not possible as the data were anonymised. The Trust shared anonymised data after undertaking a Data Privacy Impact Assessment and a Data Transfer Agreement. Data supporting this study is not publicly available due to ethical considerations around accessing linked patient-level healthcare data. Please contact the main author for more information (a.garner2@lancaster.ac.uk).
PubMed id: 38346686
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