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Virtual Wards - Deliver a Virtual Ward Future
Virtual wards are key to reducing pressures on the NHS and technology partners are integral to making them work.
Here’s how we can collaborate with you to achieve the NHS virtual ward targets and help you to deliver safe, high-quality care, at home.
Our Unique Eco-System Can Help Deliver a Virtual Wards Future
At Access, we're the only supplier that can partner with you to join up your care across primary and secondary healthcare, social care and the care sector, the key to supporting the whole virtual ward.
Our breadth of solutions provide visibility for your staff, so they have the information they need to provide safe, acute-level care.
Whether you’re stepping down care to make beds available in hospital or providing anticipatory care to avoid admission, at home or in residential care, our solutions can help you roster, provision and monitor care, communicate with patients, and provide a clear, real-time view of your patients’ health status and their progress towards recovery.
With data flowing to existing systems from across the care continuum and easy-to-navigate dashboards, you’re armed with the confidence and flexibility to treat patients in a virtual ward safely.
What are virtual wards?
With such limited capacity already, no one should stay in hospital for longer than they need to let alone be admitted when practical alternatives are available. Thanks to the expansion of virtual wards, healthcare professionals can now deliver frictionless, at-home care to patients, anytime.
Supported by state-of-the-art monitoring and communication tools, clinicians can provide safe and effective community care. This means that patients can be cared for in a comfortable, familiar setting, where they are likely to be happier and recover more quickly.
Read more about what are virtual wards, the challenges of virtual wards and how we can help overcome them.
How virtual wards help offer better healthcare
Target : 45 - 50
Reduction in bed usage per 100k people
£10bn
Potential saving every year
94%
of patients cared for at home felt more confident about being able to manage their condition
50%
reduction in re-admission rate
40.3%
reduction in the average length of hospital stay
Making Virtual Wards a Reality with Seamlessly Integrated Product Insights
Electronic Patient Record (EPR) System:
Central record to hold patient information for healthcare professionals
Social Care Case Management:
Central record to hold patient information for social care professionals
Patient Flow Manager:
Dashboards that show an overview of patients and their needs in each virtual ward
Care Commissioning:
To ensure everything needed for the care plan is in place
Rostering software:
To ensure the right people are in the right place at the right time
Social Prescribing Software:
To help solve social issues that can lead to hospital admission
An Integrated Care Approach to Virtual Wards
Integration and collaboration between systems, people and places are key drivers in making virtual wards work effectively. Our interoperable solutions allow for seamless workflows across acute, community, voluntary, and social care to aid home-based support, all of which are crucial to delivering quality, joined-up care to virtual wards patients.
Read more about how we support Virtual Wards
Virtual wards are the future of healthcare. Here's more information about what virtual wards are, and how we support them here at Access.
Why Virtual Wards?
Common core components to enable a consistent user experience
Flexibility to adapt to various clinical pathways
Re-use of existing capabilities to enable clinician adoption and efficiency
Integration of health and social care systems
Common standards, integrations and data model
Benefits of Virtual Wards for:
Virtual Wards FAQs
What are virtual wards?
Virtual wards enable patients to recover within the familiarity of their homes instead of a traditional hospital setting. Using remote monitoring systems and data-powered technologies, patients can receive hospital-level, short-term care without needing a healthcare professional physically present.
How do virtual wards work?
Virtual wards rely on wearables and environmental tracking devices to remotely manage an individual's health. These devices continuously monitor a person's vital signs, behaviour, and environment, feeding this data back to healthcare providers in real time and enabling them to manage the patient's care requirements.
If the technology detects that the patient is at danger of falling, having a seizure, or experiencing anything else that would require medical attention, it alerts the clinician to check in or intervene as necessary.
Who are virtual wards suitable for?
Virtual wards are suitable for people who suffer from certain medical conditions such as frailty, heart failure and acute respiratory infections. They are primarily designed for those who require ongoing monitoring and short-term care but who do not necessarily need to be hospitalised.
What are the benefits of virtual wards?
Virtual wards offer a wealth of advantages for patients, their families and healthcare providers. Some of the key benefits include improved patient outcomes, reduced hospital admissions and readmissions, reduced burden and workload on healthcare staff, increased patient satisfaction and quality of life, and better use of healthcare resources, to name a few.
How can the impact of virtual wards be measured?
The impact of virtual wards can be assessed using various metrics, including but not limited to:
- Number of reductions in hospital admissions and readmissions
- Length of stay in hospitals
- Patient satisfaction surveys
- Health outcomes such as mortality rates, complication rates, and disease management indicators
- Healthcare resource utilisation, including cost savings
- Patient-reported outcomes and quality of life assessments
