Broomwell's service enables fast, accurate diagnosis of heart problems by telephone, allowing patients to receive a full 12-lead ECG test at their local GP surgery in minutes. This eliminates cardiac 'false alarms', helps to avoid the need for emergency admissions, and cuts the inconvenience and expense of patients having to travel to hospital outpatients or diagnostic centres for unnecessary tests. It also relieves pressure on secondary care resources.
Recent data from the use of Broomwell's ECG service in GP surgeries shows that it has saved nearly 30,000 referrals to hospital outpatients or diagnostic centres for tests, in turn saving over £4M for PCTs in the Greater Manchester area in the past year alone. Based on these figures, Broomwell estimates that if its ECG service was available in every English GP surgery, it would save 500,000 referrals for tests and over £70M per year.
In addition, the ECG service has also shown the potential to prevent over 100,000 A&E attendances per year, saving over £50M if deployed nationally, by enabling people with cardiac symptoms to be treated in a primary care setting (GP surgeries or health centres) without needing to be sent to hospital. Combined with the reduction in hospital referrals for tests, this leads to savings exceeding £120M per year.
Joshua Rowe, CEO of Broomwell Healthwatch, said: "Telemedical ECGs have significantly reduced the number of unnecessary referrals to hospitals in the Greater Manchester area and across England, saving millions for the NHS, and the potential for greater savings if the service was rolled out nationally is clear.
"Having completed 170,000 successful ECG interpretations and doing some 1,500 ECGs per week, the service has improved patient care by cutting unnecessary hospital referrals for tests and visits to A&E. This saves stress and worry for patients, frees up vital resources, and is helping to transform standards of cardiac care in the NHS."
Broomwell's primary telemedical services provide PCTs and GPs with 24-hour expert diagnostic support for 12-lead ECGs and Arrhythmia Monitoring from a team of expert cardiac clinicians, enabling patients to receive quick convenient care, closer to home. Practice nurses carry out ECG recordings at the GP surgery and transmit the results over the phone or web connection, where a team of expert cardiac clinicians interpret the ECG trace and give an immediate verbal diagnosis, followed by a written report that is sent to the GP within minutes and can be filled into the standard electronic patient files. Broomwell's own data shows that 90% of even symptomatic patients were managed by their local GP following a diagnosis from the service, without needing a hospital referral.
Results from the use of Broomwell's ECG service in the Greater Manchester and Cheshire Cardiac and Stroke Network (GMCCSN) over a two-year period across 9 PCTs in the area, showed that use of the service prevented 63% of referrals for ECGs, to outpatients.
Broomwell also offers a home monitoring service, Cardiac Direct, to post-operative patients, those recovering from a heart attack or who are frequent visitors to hospital for chest-pain symptoms. This helps patients to manage their own conditions, eliminates cardiac 'false alarms', provides reassurance and can further reduce unnecessary hospital A&E admissions.
As part of the service, patients are given personal, palm-sized full 12 lead ECG units and 24-hour telephone access to Broomwell's monitoring centre, which is staffed by a highly trained cardiac team. Patients call the centre (which has their medical records), describe their symptoms and transmit their ECG. This enables the centre to make an informed diagnosis. This accelerates referral to A&E if treatment is needed, or gives immediate reassurance in the majority of cases where hospitalisation is not necessary.
Further services provided by Broomwell for GP surgeries are Arrhythmia Monitoring, including a rapid interpretation service for 24-hour tapes and 8-day loop monitors, as well as a Telehealth Monitoring service for congestive heart failure (CHF), and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
The company has also introduced its Arrhythmia Watch, which is worn by patients with suspected arrhythmia and enables them to capture and record episodes as they occur. This again reduces the need for unnecessary hospital visits for diagnostic tests, saving stress and inconvenience whilst also saving the NHS a significant amount of money. Early results from over 3,000 tests using the watch showed that no arrhythmia was present in 80% of patients.