Digital dashboard helps Angela significantly reduce hospital admissions
The situation
Angela is in her 60’s, lives with her husband and suffers from asthma and diabetes. Her condition varies in severity and can be difficult to control. During 2019, by November, Angela had over 100 days of non-elective hospital admissions including 8 admissions within a 12-week period. Her clinical management is led locally by Community Matrons the Specialist Respiratory Nurse, Heart and Lung Department. These teams regularly review Angela’s condition in hospital & home visits and via telephone when Angela has increased symptoms.
NRS was asked to consider Angela with a view to whether a digital TEC solution would help her better self-manage her condition and reduce the need for hospital visits.
The solution
NRS identified a combination of a Cascade 3d digital Connected Care system with a Bluetooth Pulse Oximeter, Blood Glucose Monitor and Alexa Show to support Angela. Following installation in January 2020, Angela and the Community Matron were shown how to operate the devices and coached in interpreting the results given on a dashboard.
Angela can now manage her own health by regularly testing her oxygen saturations and blood sugar levels, creating a dashboard of results during the day. Angela can contact the nurses if her readings are out of the norm or symptoms are exasperated. the Community Matron can then video triage with a quick view of the readings remotely. The system can also alert if the readings are out.
Having an Amazon Alexa Show included with the Cascade3d enabled direct communication between the nursing team and Angela.
The Trust team went one step further and set up what they now call “The Alexa Room”, a private dedicated room for consultations, demos and training in how to use the device for both the staff and patients.
The Outcomes
When gathering Angela’s data after four months of using the technology, the team were not prepared for the immediate and impactful results when comparing the data to the previous four months. The results were dramatic – her days in hospital fell from 43 to just three.
Angela has also confirmed that since commencing with Cascade3d, her anxiety levels have reduced and she felt a sense of control over her condition.
The Community Matron can now, at the touch of a button, see and talk with Angela to provide advice and support without the need for a physical visit. Using the Alexa Show also means the Community Matron can actively watch inhaler techniques and understand the wider aspects of Angela’s care at any time.
Cascade3d has saved time for the Community Matrons by prioritising focus on helping when there is real time data to show a need or potential issue. This, combined with the reduced need for home visits, eliminated hospital visits (saving approximately £13,000 over the first 4 months) and reduction in Angela’s anxiety has led the team to look at other similar potential uses and cases where the Cascade dashboard can be used.
So far 40 other patients have had variations of the same solution installed. And the use of the Alexa Show has enabled greater support as people are connected via video to family and even taught how to online shop. It has allowed other social care practitioners to support and carry out wellbeing checks which would otherwise not have happened. The success of this has come down to the hard work of the matrons who quickly saw the benefit and committed to trialling the equipment, and other dedicated members of the NRS and Trust team.