The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has identified requirements for the future success of virtual wards in the NHS.
Its programme director Mark Salmon has outlined the points in a blogpost that also points to a plan for guidelines in assessing the supporting technology.
Virtual wards involve the use of remote monitoring technology for acute hospitals to keep track of the conditions of non-critical patients in their homes, thereby expanding the capacity of the health service. NHS England has set a target to increase the capacity to 40-50 ‘virtual beds’ per 100,000 of the population, equivalent to 24,000 in all, by the end of next year, with each integrated care service implementing models for acute respiratory infection and frailty pathways.
Salmon said this will require systems to only use virtual wards for patients who would otherwise be admitted to an NHS acute hospital or to facilitate their early discharge.
This would have to be accompanied by maintaining safe staffing and caseloads, managing the length of stay in a virtual ward through clear criteria, and fully exploiting the remote monitoring technology and digital platforms.
Overall, these steps could help to maximise overall bed capacity.
Efficiencies and safe care
“The ambition for virtual wards is to expand the capacity of the acute care sector by managing patients, who would otherwise be in hospital, remotely in their homes, creating potential staffing efficiencies and providing safe and more convenient care for patients,” Salmon said.
He also pointed to three relevant NICE workstreams, one of which is the development of guidance on assessing the relevant technologies. This will include guidance on future priorities for data collection and is expected to be published by the end of September.
The other workstreams are the development of a clinical guideline on the initial assessment and management of acute respiratory infection, and economic evaluations and implementation support tools.
