Leanne Price

Dorset County Hospital, UK



Biography

Leanne Price currently works for the Acute Hospital At Home(AHAH) department at Dorset County Hospital.

C Wilson completed his Under Graduate Medical Degree from Bristol Univeristy in 2017. He currently works for the Acute Hospital At Home (AHAH) department at Dorset County Hospital

Abstract

The National Diabetes Foot Care Audit (NDFA) estimates that the cost of diabetic foot disease to the NHS in England is £1 billion per annum.1 Our service manages patients with diabetic foot ulcers in the community. This should result in financial gains and improved patient outcomes whilst in accordance with the national objective2 of managing patients in the community.

Our ‘Acute Hospital at Home’ (AHAH) service is run by a multidisciplinary team including Medical Consultants, Junior Doctors,  Microbiologists, Nurses, Physiotherapists and Healthcare assistants. A virtual ward round occurs daily in addition to a flexible ability to review patients either in hospital or at home.

We have performed a retrospective analysis from a snapshot of 20 patients to provide initial data, and are currently analysing an increased cohort of patients in this study. The primary clinical outcomes include length of hospital admission, amputation rates, readmission, patient satisfaction and potential cost implications.

The snapshot study showed patients managed through AHAH had shorter length of inpatient stays: 4 days compared to 15. This results in a saving of £1980 per patient per admission. We are confident our larger study will continue to prove equivalence in rates of amputations, readmissions and death.

To date, our results demonstrate clear benefits of managing patients with diabetic foot ulcers in the community. Not only clear cost advantages but also significantly improved patient satisfaction3. We believe that the AHAH service is a safe and hugely valuable clinical service which could be widely applied across healthcare.