by Health Call on 1st March 2021Case study: Digital Care Home

Health Call’s Digital Care Home is a digital solution that enables trained care home staff to send observational data for residents to hospital staff. This means a clinical decision can be made regarding the resident so that clinical teams can manage and prioritise patients, based on their observational data.

It also allows for routine observations to be provided which helps identify what is ‘normal’ for individuals or to detect early deterioration.

Care home staff use the SBAR – Situation, Background, Assessment and Recommendation tool. These observations are used to calculate a NEWS2 score (National Early Warning) which clinicians can analyse and determine the most appropriate next steps for that patient. This not only helps plan care for the patient, but also helps staff prioritise their caseloads.

The results are available to the clinical team in real time. The results are pulled through into the patient’s existing electronic patient record and are triaged appropriately.

Admissions to hospitals reduced on average by 3.4 per care home each month as a result of the project. It also helped to identify patients who should be in hospital sooner, making care for those patients safer.

Sandra Smyth, a district nurse who has used the service said:

We will wonder why we did it any other way. The SBAR is effective for nurses to prioritise where they need to attend to ensure the best patient outcomes.