Background
Haldane House in Sandhurst is a nursing home specialising in dementia care and mental health for the elderly. Haldane House’s residents have a wide range of needs and require complex care from the expert nursing team.
The Frimley Health and Care Remote Monitoring Service enables health readings, such as a resident’s symptoms and blood pressure, to be shared with a Digital Health Team. This team of healthcare professionals can spot any changes and offer clinical advice and further support when needed.
Haldane House’s nursing team has been using the Docobo remote monitoring system called DOC@HOME as their digital platform since 2022. This enables them to share symptoms with the remote monitoring Service and they have won a Docobo Innovation Award for their implementation.
Haldane House – remote monitoring champions.
The team at Haldane House were invited to use the Remote Monitoring Service to help support the complex care required by their residents. Senior Care Worker Clare Minihane was elected as the home’s ‘Docobo Champion’ and attended training, bringing back the knowledge to the home which she was able to share with her colleagues.
Nursing home colleagues collect residents’ health readings and use Docobo’s DOC@HOME system to share this with the Digital Health Team. If symptoms exceed their agreed threshold an alert is generated in the DOC@HOME platform. Alerts, health readings and symptoms are monitored by the Digital Health Team 24 hours a day. If there are any anomalies the team call the nursing home to provide clinical advice and support to optimise care for the resident. Depending on their care needs the team can also escalate to the local GP Practice for further support.
How remote monitoring is benefiting Haldane House
Manager, Sharon Flint, explains:
We did have trepidations when the Docobo remote monitoring system was brought into the home. As we are all nurses at Haldane House, we initially wondered why we needed to use this system in order to have our clinical opinions judged. However – the system is amazing! It not only saves a massive amount of admin time – so we no longer have to stay in a telephone queue for the GP for hours – it’s really so helpful!
‘Resident of the Day’ system for observations
Docobo have recognised the team’s work implementing and continued use of the system to benefit residents with the Docobo Innovation Award.
Clare Minihane, Senior Care Assistant explains:
We use the ‘Resident of the Day’ system for resident observations. Once a month we take observations of a resident and put them onto the Docobo system. This means that if a resident becomes unwell – we have a baseline for what is normal for them, which is really helpful.
Examples of time savings
Sharon Flint, Manager, says:
We recently had a resident who we thought had a transient ischaemic attack (TIA), and they were unable to swallow. So, we used Docobo [to share this with the Digital Health Team] and the GP came out – prescribing antibiotics in the first instance. They suggested an urgent SALT referral. Subsequently we had to send an alert because the resident’s condition deteriorated, and we hadn’t heard from SALT. We received a call back from the virtual team [Digital Health Team] within 20 mins – with advice on what we needed to do. If we had phoned the ambulance directly, our resident would not have fitted the priority – but because we had had the ‘OK’ from our clinical Hub [Digital Health Team] and our GP, we were able to pass on all the details to the paramedics that we had been advised by a clinician that we needed a hospital admission.
How has using remote monitoring improved resident outcomes?
Sharon says:
Docobo is really well used here at Haldane House, as it [enables the Digital Health Team to] advise us on what steps to take next for residents. It’s also quick and easy for smaller clinical issues – like an eye infection or a UTI – which may have taken some time to solve prior to this service. For example, one of our ladies had a suspected eye infection, which we put through on Docobo. This was reviewed quickly by the Hub [Digital Health Team] and the GP and the prescription was ready to go. All so quick and easy and hugely beneficial for our residents. All our nursing staff say it’s so much less time consuming than hanging on the phone!
Clare adds:
With Docobo, you are guaranteed a call back and the clinical hub team [Digital Health Team] ring back really quickly. They also phone up if they notice that sat levels or blood pressure is low. If I send an alert through – I always go on to Docobo on my laptop and can watch the alert, and watch it being picked up – so I know the next phone call coming through will be from the clinical hub. The response time is always fantastic.All so quick and easy and hugely beneficial for our residents. All our nursing staff say it’s so much less time consuming than hanging on the phone!
