ArticleBMJ open2021
National Early Warning Scores and COVID-19 deaths in care homes: an ecological time-series study.
Article in BMJ open, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Which acute deterioration tools are used in long-term care facilities and how have they been evaluated? A scoping review.BMC health services research · 2025Article
- Predictors of care home resident conveyance to hospital or referral to community pathways by a regional ambulance service attending medical emergencies: a retrospective cross sectional study.Scandinavian journal of trauma, resuscitation and emergency medicine · 2024Article
- The biosafety incident response competence scale for clinical nursing staff: a development and validation study.BMC nursing · 2024Article
- Article
- What items should be included in an early warning score for remote assessment of suspected COVID-19? qualitative and Delphi study.BMJ open · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectivesTo investigate whether National Early Warning Scores (NEWS/NEWS2) could contribute to COVID-19 surveillance in care homes.
setting460 care home units using the same software package to collect data on residents, from 46 local authority areas in England.
participants6464 care home residents with at least one NEWS recording. EXPOSURE MEASURE: 29 656 anonymised person-level NEWS from 29 December 2019 to 20 May 2020 with component physiological measures: systolic blood pressure, respiratory rate, pulse rate, temperature and oxygen saturation. Baseline values for each measure calculated using 80th and 20th centile scores before March 2020. OUTCOME MEASURE: Cross-correlation comparison of time series with Office for National Statistics weekly reported registered deaths of care home residents where COVID-19 was the underlying cause of death, and all other deaths (excluding COVID-19) up to 10 May 2020.
resultsDeaths due to COVID-19 were registered from 23 March 2020 in the local authority areas represented in the study. Between 23 March 2020 and 10 May 2020, there were 5753 deaths (1532 involving COVID-19 and 4221 other causes). We observed a rise in the proportion of above-baseline NEWS beginning 16 March 2020, followed 2 weeks later by an increase in registered deaths (cross-correlation of
conclusionsNEWS could contribute to COVID-19 disease surveillance in care homes during the pandemic. Oxygen saturation, respiratory rate and temperature could be prioritised as they appear to signal rise in mortality almost as well as NEWS. This study reinforces the need to collate data from care homes, to monitor and protect residents' health. Further work using individual level outcome data is needed to evaluate the role of NEWS in the early detection of resident illness.
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