Garner, A., Lewis, J., Dixon, S. et al. (6 more authors) (2024) The impact of digital technology in care homes on unplanned secondary care usage and associated costs. Age and Ageing, 53 (2). afae004. ISSN 0002-0729
Abstract
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.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the British Geriatrics Society. This is an Open Access ar ticle distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | telehealth, emergency medicine, long-term care, care homes, routinely collected data, older people |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Academic Services (Leeds) > IT |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 11 Jul 2024 14:36 |
Last Modified: | 11 Jul 2024 14:36 |
Published Version: | https://academic.oup.com/ageing/article/53/2/afae0... |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Oxford University Press (OUP) |
Identification Number: | 10.1093/ageing/afae004 |
Related URLs: | |
Sustainable Development Goals: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:214134 |
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Filename: The impact of digital technology in care homes.pdf
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