The NHS is increasingly introducing virtual wards to support people at the place they call home, including care homes. Virtual wards allow patients to get the care they need at home safely and conveniently, rather than being in hospital.
“Virtual wards enable patients to remain in their own home supported by family or carers to recover more quickly in a more comfortable environment. The evidence base for virtual wards is growing, with clinical evidence to show that virtual wards are a safe and efficient alternative to NHS bedded care, particularly for patients living with frailty. Greater use of ‘virtual wards’, which allow people to be safely monitored from the comfort of their own home, will be achieved by an extra 3,000 beds to provide over 10,000 in total by this autumn, allowing staff to care for up to 50,000 patients a month this way over the longer term... The NHS has successfully rolled out 7,000 virtual ward beds, with capacity increasing by nearly 50% since the summer. Our ambition is to scale up capacity ahead of next winter to above 10,000 with a longer-term ambition of reaching 40-50 virtual wards per 100,000 people, which would mean more than 50,000 admissions a month. As well as continuing to increase capacity, we need to increase utilisation of virtual wards so we make more of the capacity we already have.”
NHS England and NHS Improvement are asking all Integrated Care Systems (ICSs) to extend or introduce the virtual ward model: "ICSs have been asked to deliver virtual ward capacity equivalent to 40 to 50 virtual ward ‘beds’ per 100,000 population (equivalent to the delivery of up to 24,000 virtual ward beds), by December 2023."
Learn more about Virtual Wards by viewing the NHS England information video here
Supporting information for ICS leads Enablers for success: virtual wards including hospital at home - Download here
RELATED EVENT: Setting up and running Virtual Wards, THURSDAY 20 APR 2023, Virtual CPD Conference
