Date published: 1 February 2023
BBC Morning Live recently spent a day with Mersey Care’s Telehealth service and also visited Colette Melia, one of their heart failure virtual ward patients. They were keen to learn more about this innovative approach, which is enabling over 2,000 people a day to be monitored remotely from their homes, avoiding the need to be in hospital.
The Telehealth service supports virtual wards, long-term condition monitoring and COVID-19 patients. BBC Morning Live visited the Telehealth Hub to see the growing team of clinicians and admin staff working hard to keep people well at home. They were particularly interested in the virtual wards, which are helping to prevent hospital admissions for patients suffering with respiratory conditions, heart failure and those awaiting cardiac surgery, and has saved 6,583 bed days and £2,633,200 since 2021.
The film crew met with Julie Bowman, Telehealth Nurse Advisor and Dr Rajiv Sankaranarayanan, Consultant Cardiologist and Heart Failure Virtual Ward Lead at LUHFT. Afterwards they went to visit Colette at her home in Liverpool.
The Telehealth Team talked about how virtual wards are bringing huge benefits to patients and the wider healthcare system, by preventing hospital admissions and providing one to one customised care. The technology provided to patients is simple to use and enables them to upload daily readings such as oxygen levels, heart rate, respiratory rate, blood pressure, ECG, step count and temperature. The system then highlights any significant trends from the data which helps them to focus on patients who look as though they would benefit from input, rather than those who are recovering well.
Colette whose care with heart failure was so transformed by remote monitoring said “I’m so happy to have my life back”.
Watch the segment below which went out this morning (Wednesday 1 February).