Impact of digital technology in care homes on Emergency Department attendances

Aims, Objectives and BackgroundHealthCall is a digital health initiative that aims to reduce emergency department attendances by upskilling care home staff to use app-based technology whereby residents with new clinical presentations’ observations are recorded electronically using a structured SBAR approach. Information is fed to a Single Point of Access where clinical staff triage the referrals. This study evaluated the effectiveness of the HealthCall technology across the North East of England to safely reduce ED referrals and attendance.Method and DesignThe study included 122 care homes covering the study period 2018–2021. Routinely collected secondary care data from County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust was linked with clinical data from HealthCall. We describe the change in ED attendances over the period before, during and after the introduction of the technology to the care homes. We fitted Poisson generalised linear mixture models to monthly counts of emergency attendances. Covariates were included to adjust for seasonality and external factors such as COVID-19, and hierarchical random intercepts were included to account for both individual and care home variability. The impact of HealthCall technology usage on residents’ expected number of attendances is tested as a ‘step’ change at intervention and a ‘slope’ change post intervention.Results and ConclusionWe identified 8,702 care home residents through linkage between the secondary care and HealthCall datasets. Preliminary results suggest the use of HealthCall reduces expected monthly ED attendances for care home residents by 16% (95%CI 5 to 25, p-value<0.001). No significant change was observed in the impact of HealthCall during the post-intervention period.This study finds that the implementation of the HealthCall technology reduces the expected number of monthly emergency department attendances for residents. The technology allows for ongoing monitoring of resident health alongside providing more convenient and timely access to clinical advice that promotes more appropriate and resident-focussed decision leading to fewer unnecessary ED attendances.

Monitoring indirect impact of COVID-19 pandemic on services for cardiovascular diseases in the UK.

OBJECTIVE: To monitor hospital activity for presentation, diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular diseases during the COVID-19) pandemic to inform on indirect effects. METHODS: Retrospective serial cross-sectional study in nine UK hospitals using hospital activity data from 28 October 2019 (pre-COVID-19) to 10 May 2020 (pre-easing of lockdown) and for the same weeks during 2018-2019. We analysed aggregate data for selected cardiovascular diseases before and during the epidemic. We produced an online visualisation tool to enable near real-time monitoring of trends. RESULTS: Across nine hospitals, total admissions and emergency department (ED) attendances decreased after lockdown (23 March 2020) by 57.9% (57.1%-58.6%) and 52.9% (52.2%-53.5%), respectively, compared with the previous year. Activity for cardiac, cerebrovascular and other vascular conditions started to decline 1-2 weeks before lockdown and fell by 31%-88% after lockdown, with the greatest reductions observed for coronary artery bypass grafts, carotid endarterectomy, aortic aneurysm repair and peripheral arterial disease procedures. Compared with before the first UK COVID-19 (31 January 2020), activity declined across diseases and specialties between the first case and lockdown (total ED attendances relative reduction (RR) 0.94, 0.93-0.95; total hospital admissions RR 0.96, 0.95-0.97) and after lockdown (attendances RR 0.63, 0.62-0.64; admissions RR 0.59, 0.57-0.60). There was limited recovery towards usual levels of some activities from mid-April 2020. CONCLUSIONS: Substantial reductions in total and cardiovascular activities are likely to contribute to a major burden of indirect effects of the pandemic, suggesting they should be monitored and mitigated urgently.