A Local COVID-19 Support Platform for Nursing Homes: Feedback and Perspectives

J Am Med Dir Assoc. 2021 Aug;22(8):1599-1601. doi: 10.1016/j.jamda.2021.06.001. Epub 2021 Jun 10.

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a major impact on nursing homes (NHs), which were not prepared to manage infections among their at-risk patient populations. In order to comply with the French government's guidelines, we rapidly set up a local support platform (LSP) to help NHs manage their cases of COVID-19. The LSP comprised multidisciplinary decision support, a specialist phone hotline, mobile geriatric medicine teams, and videoconferences on COVID-19. We first quantified the LSP's interventions in 63 local NHs since the start of the first wave of COVID-19 (March 2020): 9 instances of multidisciplinary decision support, 275 calls to the specialist phone hotline, 84 interventions by mobile geriatric medicine teams, and 16 videoconferences. The LSP had been used during and between the first and second waves of the epidemic, and all had evolved to meet the NHs' needs.

Keywords: COVID-19; clinical health care quality improvement; crisis management; decision support system; nursing home.

MeSH terms

  • Aged
  • COVID-19*
  • Feedback
  • Humans
  • Nursing Homes
  • Pandemics*
  • SARS-CoV-2