David Oliver: With virtual wards, NHS England is overpromising once again

The term “virtual wards” gained fresh momentum in the NHS during the first waves of covid-19. Before the pandemic it had referred to community based, multidisciplinary teams case managing patients at high risk of acute hospital admission to prevent or respond to crises and keep them at home.12It was then repurposed in 2020-21 to describe telephone and digital monitoring of symptoms and physiological oxygen observations for people mostly with respiratory covid-19, to help support them at home with a direct link to a secondary care clinical team.3 Some individual trusts456 that reported local success with this model published their data or extended it to other respiratory infections or exacerbations and were then singled out as exemplars by NHS England (NHSE), which in turn picked up on the idea as a way of reducing demand and activity in acute hospital sites by providing a safe, cost effective alternative.7Having initially promised 7000…
Read Original Article: David Oliver: With virtual wards, NHS England is overpromising once again »