NHS England published the Delivery plan for recovering urgent and emergency care services report in January 2023, which includes a focus on the development of Virtual Wards:
Virtual wards combine technology and face-to-face provision to allow hospital-level care including diagnostics and treatment, using many of the same staff that work in hospitals. In some cases, virtual wards can replace the need for admission, and in others facilitate people being able to safely leave hospital sooner.
"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.”
Read more here https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/B2034-delivery-plan-for-recovering-urgent-and-emergency-care-services.pdf
RELATED EVENT:
Setting up and running Virtual Wards, Thursday 20th April 2023, Virtual Conference
This conference will enable you to:
- Network with colleagues who are working to deliver virtual wards
- Learn from outstanding practice in setting up and running virtual wards
- Reflect on national developments and learning from case studies in various clinical areas
- Improve the way you use and implement the Virtual Ward and Urgent Community Response Capabilities Framework
- Understand how you can develop the role of the Virtual Ward Nurse
- Ensure patient safety and effective timely responses to deterioration
- Develop your skills and competence in running and working in virtual wards
- Understand how you can improve governance, remote monitoring technology enablement and the management of patients via a digital platform managed remotely by a clinical team
- Identify key strategies for ensuring best practice in consent, and understanding legal and information governance requirements
- Self assess and reflect on your own practice
- Gain cpd accreditation points contributing to professional development and revalidation evidence