NHS England has published the latest figures for the capacity and occupancy of virtual wards across integrated care boards in October 2024, sharing data on capacity, occupancy percentage and capacity per 100,000 of the GP registered population whilst also noting that the stats are “experimental” and “undergoing evaluation”.
Regarding the NHS’s 2023 ambition for ICBs to include 40-50 virtual ward beds per 100,000 adults, only one ICB is reported to have met this target in October 2024: Northamptonshire ICB with a reported 42.5 beds per 100,000.
Six ICBs are shown to have between 20 and 30 virtual ward beds per 100,000, ranging from Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly with 35.1 to Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes with 30.1. Other ICBs in this range include Gloucestershire (32.1); Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire West (31.7); Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin (31.4); and Somerset (30.6).
A total of 13 ICBs reported a capacity of between 20 and 29.9; whilst the remaining 22 ICBs reported capacity between 10 and 19.9.
When it comes to occupancy percentage, England has an average rate of 78.2 percent for October 2024, up from 68.1 percent in October of last year. In the latest figures, 22 ICBs are reported to be meeting NHSE’s ambitions of 80 percent occupancy, compared to 14 ICBs last October.
In total, 9,896 patients are reported as being in a virtual ward in October in 2024, compared with 7,317 in the same month of 2023.
To take a look at the most recent statistics on virtual ward usage and capacity, please click here.
Virtual wards across the NHS
In a HTN Now panel discussion from August, we were joined by Heather Young, virtual ward programme manager at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, and ChristinaPrada, virtual ward service lead at Northampton General Hospital, to discuss learnings and experiences around virtual wards.
August also saw the publication of NHSE’s virtual wards operational framework, designed to help support consistency and the achievement of goals set out in the urgent and emergency care recovery plan, along with 2024/25 priorities and operational planning guidance around maintaining a virtual ward capacity of over 80 percent.
In September, Liverpool University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust’s heart failure virtual ward introduced use of a remote monitoring digital service with the aim of improving recovery rates for patients experiencing serious cardiac conditions.
October saw Norfolk Community Health and Care NHS Trust reporting on the progress of its community virtual ward service a year after launch, with the trust highlighting how the service has admitted and discharged 1,315 patients in that time. A Single Point of Access scheme in Norfolk and Waveney, providing a hub through which clinicians from different services work together to refer patients, also reportedly helped 90 percent of referred patients avoid unnecessary hospital admissions.
