Care home residents benefit from remote monitoring roll-out
Arden Lodge Residential Care Home in Acocks Green is just one of several care homes across East Birmingham that is using remote monitoring equipment to improve the quality of care for care home residents.
Remote monitoring equipment enables care home staff to take residents’ readings - such as blood pressure and blood oxygen - and record symptoms and feedback via the system to the East Locality Hub team in Washwood Heath who contacts the care home.
This approach helps residents to receive speedier treatment, avoid unnecessary hospital visits and free up hospital beds for those that need them more.
The first phase of the remote monitoring programme, led by BCHC, launched earlier in the year when care homes in this part of the city were invited to take part by receiving the equipment and the training.
To date, 13 care homes have signed up to using the kit, with staff at a further three due to be trained this month. BCHC plans to continue the roll-out plan to other care homes across Birmingham and Solihull during 2024/2025.
Arden Lodge, home to around 40 residents, recently used the kit three times in one day and was able to keep all three of its poorly residents in the comfort of their own surroundings.
The Arden Lodge team started using the equipment two months ago after undergoing a morning’s training on the digital system.
Manager Alex Keegan (pictured, second from right with colleagues) said: ‘The remote monitoring is really easy to use and has saved many of our residents from, what can often be, traumatic hospital visits and sometimes hospital admission.
“Using the equipment is easy and unintrusive for our residents. It also upskills our staff who are trained to take blood pressure, blood oxygen readings and how to observe symptoms.
“If we get readings that we are concerned about, we send an alert to the multi-disciplinary team at the Locality Hub. They contact us, usually within the hour, and together we triage the resident and agree the next steps.
“We have used the equipment around 15 times, recently three times in one day when three of our residents became poorly.
"The East Hub team arranged for the urgent community response team to visit within two hours and involved our local GP and pharmacy too. All three were treated the same afternoon, remained in our care and are now fully recovered."
Adult community services general manager Shannie Jennings said: “We have a strong stakeholder engagement programme underway which includes contacting the care homes that are already on board weekly to make sure they have everything they need, as well as continuing to accept new care homes on the programme.
“Studies have shown that this digital equipment is helping to reduce hospital admission from care home residents and we know from our own records that this is being mirrored in the work we are doing.”
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