Using video consultation to connect nursing home staff with clinical experts is an effective strategy to reduce both antipsychotic use and physical restraints among patients with dementia, according to a new Boston-based Beth Israel Deaconness Medical Center-led study.
Putting nursing home staff in touch with specialists whose expertise includes how to best manage dementia symptoms, such as behavioral neurologists and geriatric psychiatrists, can increase positive outcomes that don't impinge on patient health, autonomy and dignity, the study concluded. The results were published in the Journal of the American Medical Directors Association.
"There is a two-pronged issue facing nursing homes in the United States: shortages of geriatricians, behavioral neurologists and geriatric psychiatrists and a lack of proximity of community nursing homes to larger medical facilities with specialists," Stephen Gordon, MD, co-author of the study and a geriatrician at BIDMC, said in a statement. "Video conference technology can bring academic medical center specialists and nursing home staff together in a collaborative effort to care for patients with dementia."
Using Project ECHO-AGE, a video consultation program, the researchers implemented bi-weekly meetings between nursing home workers and clinical experts. The researchers noted a 75 percent decrease in the likelihood that dementia patients would be physically restrained and a 17 percent decrease in the likelihood of prescribing antipsychotics for them.