Telehealth roll out a success

Over the last couple of years Telemedicine has been offered to some care homes across Leeds with the support of Leeds NHS Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG). The aim of Telemedicine in care homes is to support care sector staff in their delivery of high quality care to care home residents in the care home wherever possible and reducing demand on primary care and hospital services.

The service enables care home staff to contact a clinical hub for advice and support with regard to residents’ health issues. Calls are made using a secure video link, enabling the clinical team at the hub to be able to speak to and assess residents remotely. The purpose of the service is to help avoid inappropriate calls to emergency services, ambulance transportation and hospital attendances where this is not clinically necessary. 

Westward Care recognises that there are many ways technology can help monitor and support people with ongoing health issues and we have been delighted to be one of the first care homes to trial this service. Telehealth includes things such as telephone or video support, where patients report signs and symptoms of their disease to healthcare professionals over the phone or via Skype, and telemonitoring, where patients link up to a monitor which transmits data allowing health care professionals to remotely monitor aspects of their condition in real-time.

Following a succesful trial in 2018 we have been able to last year we have been able to prevent on average 11 hospital admissions or visits to A&E per month.

We are delighted to see Leeds CCG sharing our successful outcomes more widely amongst the care sector.

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