Modern technology helps reduce hospital admissions and cares for patients at home

The London Borough of Bexley and Docobo Remote Monitoring have reported back on their successful remote monitoring technology project, which has resulted in a 60% reduction in GP visits to a local care home, freeing up GP time to improve access to Primary Care. The DOC@HOME digital solution, enhanced to support NHS England’s Enhanced Health in Care Homes Framework¹, has also enabled 98 fewer A&E attendances (and subsequent ambulance conveyance) over a 7-month period and four fewer admissions to hospital over a 7-month period.

The project identified Northbourne Court – a 120 bedded Care Home for residents with physical and mental health needs – for their pilot. Northbourne Court is rated as ‘good’ by CQC, but was keen to reduce the amount of ambulance call outs and inappropriate A&E attendances. By using an integrated health approach, the doc@HOME solution enables staff to monitor citizens in the care home, record observations and vital signs and transmit this data to their GP system.

”Supporting care home residents from Sidcup Medical Centre is an important but demanding part of our GPs’ working day. GP visits to care homes can take 40 minutes and they’re not always necessary. Docobo’s remote monitoring system has reduced our visits by about 60%. Having regular reports which show the symptoms and vitals from a resident is invaluable. The tech enables us to determine whether a visit is necessary or not.” Dr Sid DeshmukhChair of Bexley CCG

Staff at Northbourne Court say: “It’s a great bit of equipment. It makes me feel more competent, as instead of calling up the GP and saying the resident doesn’t look right, you can go through the set questions and then the GP has all the information they need.”

Adrian Flowerday, MD, Docobo Remote Monitoring comments: “This is a great example of partnership working between the Council, CCG, GPs, Docobo and the Care Home; significantly enhancing health provision to the Care Home, whilst reducing the demand on GP and emergency services. The functionality developed and provided by the partnership is unique and directly supports the aims of the Enhanced Health in Care Homes (EHCH) Framework, and we are proud and excited to be part of this brilliant and innovative team.”