Ground-breaking bedsore care work wins award for Highland Home Carers
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The Highlands’ largest social care provider has been recognised for its ground-breaking work helping combat bedsores in a care at home setting.
Highland Home Carers (HHC) director of operations Carolanne Mainland and her team won the award in the data driven innovation category at the annual Digital Health and Care Awards in Edinburgh.
Ms Mainland led her team of practice support technicians in the pressure ulcer reduction and prevention pilot utilising an existing Provisio SEM scanner.
The technology gives a risk indicator which enabled practice support technicians to take preventative action to mitigate the risk of patients developing a pressure ulcer or bedsore.
Ms Mainland said: “We set ourselves ambitious targets of reducing avoidable pressure ulcers in people assessed to be at high risk of developing them and reducing hospital admissions as a result of a pressure ulcer.
“We aimed to reduce unnecessary hospital admissions by 40 per cent and to reduce overall pressure ulcers by 70 per cent.
“But not one single person on the study developed a pressure ulcer meaning there were no hospital admissions whatsoever.
“The empirical data of the pilot is now drawing the attention of both clinicians and health economists.
“For example, although a subjective measure, we estimate that the study resulted in circa 50 per cent reduction in district nurse callouts.
The Highland lead nurse for care at home, Jaime Smith, QN, commended HHC for the award.
She said: “I have been hugely impressed by the forward-thinking can-do attitude of Highland Home Carers (HHC) in embracing this exciting project to identify early changes indicative of pressure damage.
“This allows HHC as part of the wider multi-disciplinary team to ensure effective risk assessment and management to decrease individuals likelihood of developing pressure damage.
“This project has been instrumental in motivating HHC clients to look out for changes to their own pressure areas, encourage mobility and positional changes in order to ‘beat their own score’.
“This project has empowered HHC teams in advocating the needs of their clients to community nursing colleagues to ensure good outcomes.”
In 2015 the UK Government estimated the cost of treating each pressure ulcer, depending on the grade, as between £1,214- £14,108.
