Intouch can help reduce unscheduled hospital admissions and length of stay thanks to its innovative self-care education software.

 

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Self care education with a range of deployment options

As well as being accessible through a range of media, Staywell self care education can be deployed in a number of ways in terms of how patients are “recruited”. The aim is to maximise patient participation and the options are broadly as follows:

GP PRACTICES - the ideal is that GPs and practice nurses promote Staywell to their LTC patients and encourage them to use it. They are then on hand to give extra support to those patients whose self care competency is shown to be low.

kirklessflyerOTHER HEALTH TEAMS - recruitment is not restricted to general practice and other health and social care teams can promote Staywell to the patients they come in contact with. So, district nurses, community matrons, rehabilitation teams, doctors and nurses in the acute sector….can all engage their patient in Staywell.

“DIY” DEPLOYMENT - in addition to, or instead of, recruitment by the teams listed above, Staywell can be offered to patients on a “DIY” basis. That is to say, they are informed through posters, flyers, local press ads….about an area-wide Staywell web address and phone line which they can use, or a central location like a library with internet access which they can visit, and they can help themselves to valuable self care education.

Self care education for thousands, not dozens of patients

When circumstances dictate that it will be a long process to get GPs and other teams involved with Staywell, the DIY deployment of Staywell is an excellent way to make some good self care education quickly available to thousands of patients. Indeed, a typical PCT area is likely to contain over 100,000 patients with a long term condition. Practices are often pushed for time to do face-to-face self care education; the Expert Patient Programme will only involve 200-300 patients per year; Staywell offers an easy and very cost-effective means to extend education to large numbers of patients. The Expert Patient Programme will cost a PCT £60,000 to £90,000 per annum. As a complement or alternative to this, Staywell can educate thousands of patients across several conditions for a fraction of that cost.