NHS England recommended that all Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) should put in place a ‘COVID Oximetry @home’ (CO@h) service in April 2020. The purpose of the CO@h service was to detect earlier deterioration in the community of COVID-19 diagnosed cases by self-monitoring so that patients could get treatment quicker.
NHS Digital was providing information about potentially eligible patients to CO@h providers so that individuals could be contacted and offered the service. The CO@h providers then reviewed the data and identified those who were likely to benefit from the service. At the point of COVID-19 diagnosis, if an individual was either (a) over 65, or (b) under 65 at high COVID-19 risk (using the Shielded Patient List, with clinical judgement) AND showing symptoms, then then they were encouraged to be enrolled in the CO@h service.
The programme closed in June 2022. NHS Digital ceased sending the daily patient list on the 30th of June 2022 to CCGs. The final SitRep collection was submitted to NHSD on the 6 July 2022.
NHS Digital completed the following activities in support of the closure of the COVID Oximetry programme of work:
1. Processing of all CO@h data has ceased unless the access to data is required under point 5
2. All access to data is disabled and any previous test data has been removed.
3. Legal and Information Governance documentation to support the closure reviewed, approved and published.
4. All approvals obtained to support the closure
5. Data is archived and retained for 3 purposes and associated time frames:
- Freedom of Information Requests - (3 years maximum)
- Data Subject Access Requests (DSARS) - (3 years maximum)
- COVID-19 Public Inquiry - (Until Public Inquiry is completed)
After these are completed, data will be deleted.
NHS England continue to support CO@h by supplying pulse oximeters on demand and have recommended that providers should continue to provide oximetry service as good practice.