Outreach acute care for nursing homes: an observational study on the quality and cost-effectiveness of the Mobile Hospital

Background: The global trend of emergency department (ED) crowding can be mitigated with outreach care. The Mobile Hospital is an outreach acute care service in Espoo, Finland. This study describes the results of the Mobile Hospital intervention to nursing homes in a pre-post study setting with benchmarking validation data.

Methods: We compared Emergency Medical Services (EMS) missions, ED visits, hospitalisations and their estimated costs from two 6-month periods in 2018-2019 (1325 nursing home beds). Benchmarking control data for ED visits were obtained from health records of the 10 largest Finnish cities.

Results: The number of EMS missions to nursing homes decreased by 16% (720 vs 604), ED visits decreased by 22% (801 vs 622), there was no significant difference in specialised inpatient episodes (178 vs 162) and primary hospital inpatient episodes were fewer (285 vs 178, decreased 38%). Annual estimated savings per resident were 686 euros (decreased 14%). Annual estimated total savings were 934 908 euros. In the benchmarking analysis, the number of ED visits and acute hospitalisations amongst the older population decreased in Espoo, while in the other cities it increased.

Conclusions: The Mobile Hospital seems to reduce nursing home residents' ED visits, hospitalisations and overall costs. Advance care planning and on-call physician telephone consultations may be useful components of the service.Implications to practice: This study adds to the growing evidence that outreach care to nursing homes is cost-effective in suburban areas with universal healthcare funding, at least as part of other developments in the acute care pathway.