[1] Patients are reviewed daily by the clinical team and the 'ward round' may involve a home visit or take place through video technology.
[1] Many virtual wards use technology like apps, wearables and other medical devices enabling clinical staff to easily check in and monitor the person's recovery.
An early type of virtual ward was developed by many teams across England, for example, in Croydon Primary Care Trust (South London).
[2] The key aims of virtual wards are to: Using risk stratification, patients can be identified by their likelihood to require admission into a hospital within the next year.
The ward is termed virtual as these beds are not real, and care takes place in the most appropriate setting for the patient, usually at home.
The virtual ward team use enhanced tracking to ensure that they can reduce the likelihood of admission, and should the patient be admitted into secondary care follow their process through hospital and attempt to facilitate an earlier discharge back into the community.
A summary from the GP computer system is pasted into these ward notes before the initial assessment, so as to provide background information and avoid unnecessary duplication of work.
This not only ensures that the patient is borne in mind, but these quarterly review data serve as positive feedback to the predictive risk modelling algorithm.
There are some variations in the way the virtual ward operates – for example, Warwickshire use a nurse-led model, whereas Wandsworth employ salaried GPs to manage their patients.
Once a virtual ward has been established in an area, they are usually focussed on patients with long term conditions that require complex medical management.
[8] Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust launched a COVID patient remote ward in 2021 using software from Dutch digital health specialist, Luscii.
[9] In response to continued capacity concerns in 2022, Spirit Health deployed their remote patient monitoring platform, Clinitouch across North West Anglia NHS Foundation Trust.
University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust established a virtual ward in 2022 for 100 heart patients undergoing ablation therapy to treat atrial fibrillation.
[11] In June 2022 the Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust announced plans to set up a 500-bed virtual ward using Dignio technology for patients with a variety of different conditions.