Virtual Pre-Admission Assessment
Gary Cousins, Nurse Consultant for Care Homes
• It is part of Nursing Home Regulations and Standards
a PAA prior to transfer of care.
• Variance in time from hospital referral to when a preadmission
assessment is completed by Nursing Home
staff.
• People do not want to be in hospital longer than
necessary.
• We have technology available to assist in the
diversification of current processes.
• The technology didn't always work - system
failure, firewalls and software were all
challenges.
• By December 2019 the aim is to have a
representative sample of both qualitative and
quantitative data that measures the impact of
the virtual assessment.
• Have reviewed the planned process as a project
group after every five PAA's.
• We have survey monkey questionnaires for
patients, hospital staff and nursing home staff to
capture feedback on the process.
Why is this important?
To date there has been no patient assessed for
transfer to one of the five participating Nursing
Homes however since initial engagement the
mean time from referral to PAA has reduced by
0.5 days.
Challenges, Learning and next steps
Aim
Within Lurgan Hospital reduce the time from referral to
completion of a pre-admission assessment (PAA) from
an average of 2.5 days to 1 day within six months,
starting June 2019, by changing from a face to face to a
virtual process in five participating Nursing Homes.
We found that changing to a virtual process
didn't suit everyone!
People were nervous about moving from a face to face
process to a virtual process so an FAQ document
and user guide were co-produced.
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