Falls in Care project easing pressure on frontline services
A project in Swansea is turning to the latest technology to improve the process of responding to someone who has fallen at home.
It estimated that between 500,000 and 1,000,000 falls occur every year in Wales in the over 65 age group. This places significant pressure on the Welsh Ambulance Service, busy hospital wards and those managing falls at home and in the community. The project aims to ensure that people receive the care that they need, in the right place and at the right time.
Against the backdrop, a collaborative including Swansea Bay University Health Board (SBUHB), Swansea Council, Simply Safe Care Group Ltd and Welsh Ambulance Services NHS Trust (WAST) came together to tackle the problem.
At the heart of the project, is the iStumble app developed by WAST and Winncare. The app, which is free and available to everyone, helps carers to assess the needs of residents who have experienced a fall at home and determine whether their fall necessitates a call to emergency services or if they can be treated at home.
Amy Jenkins is a Commissioning Officer at Swansea Council responsible for overseeing the commissioning of domiciliary care in Swansea, through local providers, which allows people to live as long and independently as possible in their own homes.
Commenting, Amy said: “Before we got involved in this project, the only option available to domiciliary care workers dealing with a fall was to call an ambulance. We wanted to build a new approach to domiciliary care and how we were responding to falls in the community. We were keen to empower carers to do more than just call an ambulance when a person in their care had fallen.
“The Simply Safe Care Group, who provide care and support for people in the local community, were already using the iStumble app and were keen to work with us. There was a natural alignment in our work. Through better management of falls, we were able to free up care workers to continue their runs in the community. We were also fortunate to secure regional funding to buy a piece of equipment called Camel which inflates to lift people from the floor when they have fallen.
“We worked with WAST and the Simply Safe falls prevention team to enable them to get training and build the necessary resource within Simply Safe. Our work in this area is reducing pressure on health and social care services and preventing people from needing to be reassessed for a package of care. The project was made possible utilising the regional Housing with Care Objective 3 funding from the Welsh Government.”
Closing, Amy said: “Much of our work was taken forward through provider and regional forums where I met Eleri D’Arcy a Clinical Quality Priority Lead at SBUHB leading on falls prevention quality improvement.”
Commenting Eleri said: “With an aging population, fall rates in the community are going up. We want to make sure we’re supporting people in the right place, keeping people independent and at home for as long as possible and away from secondary care when they do not need to be there.
“In the Swansea (SBUHB) area alone, we have between 700 and 800 patients a month coming to front door services as a result of a fall. Many of these patients don’t need to be treated at a hospital or taken there by an ambulance.
“The falls prevention project, which forms part of our commitment with Improvement Cymru on the Safe Care Collaborative, helps us to make better and more informed decisions. The aim is to reduce patients coming into hospital when they don’t need to as a result of a fall. We weren’t looking to change our response to an injurious fall but for those patients who’ve had a fall perhaps but haven’t been injured. They are at risk of what’s called a ‘long lie’ – staying on the ground for over an hour and unable to get up. This can be detrimental for someone over the age of 65. We were looking for a different alternative to stop that person coming into hospital where they could lose their independence and confidence returning home.”
She added: “We were fortunate to have willing and ready partners at Swansea Council, Simply Safe and WAST to bring all the necessary components together to trial this piece of work. Obviously, this project is still in its infancy but we’re already seeing improvements and a reduction in the number of patients coming to hospital who receive domiciliary care and have fallen at home.”
Demi Catterall works for the Simply Safe Care Group in Swansea and, it could be argued, is the thread that runs through and binds this successful collaborative.
Commenting Demi said: It’s been great working with Eleri and Amy on this project. It really is an example of collaboration at its best. We all share the same objective and the work we’ve done together is being felt across the system – by the person receiving care, the ambulance crews and the busy hospital staff.
“There’s also a greater awareness and confidence among staff responding to a fall. We have someone in our care with a long history of falls, sometimes resulting in a long lie. Through staff training and the iStumble app, we’ve managed to prevent those long lies and reduce the number of visits to hospital.”