The rural areas of the UK remain a paradox. They are commonly viewed as areas of health and wealth, but exhibit a high amount of heterogeneity between levels of deprivation. As a result, health inequalities can be overlooked in rural populations.
Around 17% of the UK population lives in rural areas, with a high proportion of inhabitants being over the age of 85. NHS England reported that by 2037, around a third of the rural population will be over 85 years of age, potentially leading to a demand in healthcare.
The cost and travel time associated with accessing secondary care services increase for rural patients compared with their urban counterparts. An average journey to the nearest hospital can take up to 78 minutes as opposed to 30 minutes in urban areas1. This figure could potentially be higher if a patient’s nearest hospital does not have cardiology facilities.
The NHS’s priority to move ‘care closer to home’ is a step forward to closing the rural healthcare gap. Bringing cardiac diagnostics to primary and community care is one way that ECG On-Demand can help to address inequalities, in line with the NHS’s national CVD programme.
ECG On-Demand brings secondary care cardiac expertise directly to primary and community care settings by offering both long-term ECG and 12-lead ECG analysis, all available to be performed from the comfort of a patient’s home, where needed.
Our ECG services are designed for flexibility and accessibility. Using the fully portable HD+ ECG machine, clinicians can perform and receive immediate 12-lead ECG reports wherever the patient is, ideal for home visits. If further testing is required, our Holter and patch monitors can be fitted during the same visit and conveniently returned to our main office via courier through our hybrid service model.
Long-term ECG monitoring can be provided at the point of care or shipped directly to a patient’s home. This approach helps reduce health inequalities by ensuring that housebound patients or those with limited access to healthcare can still receive essential cardiac diagnostics.
12-lead ECGs are often the first step in diagnosing cardiac conditions and can also serve broader screening purposes. However, despite having ECG machines available, many primary care providers face barriers such as equipment costs, limited training, and a lack of interpretive support. ECG On-Demand addresses these challenges by offering free machine rental, inclusive of servicing, and delivering reports in a clinician-friendly format, empowering providers to make confident decisions at the point of care.
By improving primary care, there is the potential for trickle down effects within secondary care due to a reduced need for more complex and costly interventions – changing the way you offer your patients access to cardiac diagnostics could be the first step!
Please contact our team or email info@ecg-od.com to find out more.
Sources:
2https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/nhs-long-term-workforce-plan-v1.2.pdf