NHS England has published the latest figures for virtual wards from December 2024, sharing insight into capacity and occupancy, and allowing for comparison of the health service’s current position with the long-term ambition to reach “40-50 virtual ward beds per 100,000 people” outlined in the 2023/24 Priorities and Operational Planning Guidance and the Delivery Plan for Recovering Urgent and Emergency Care.
For December 2024, reported virtual ward ‘bed’ capacity was 12,733, with 75.4% occupancy, slightly lower than an occupancy of 77% in November 2024.
As was the case in the October update, only one ICB is reported to have met the target of 40-50 virtual ward beds per 100,000 GP registered population in December: Northamptonshire ICB with a reported 42.6 beds per 100,000. The figures show that across the whole of England, this figure stands at 20.1 beds per 100,000; which is an increase from 20.0 in October.
Five other ICBs are shown to have a capacity of 30 or more virtual ward beds per 100,000, including Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes ICB and Hertfordshire and West Essex ICB both with 30.1, to Cornwall and The Isles of Scilly ICB with 35.1. Other ICBs in this range include Frimley (30.6); and Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin (31.4).
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, remaining unchanged since the October update.
When it comes to occupancy percentage, in the latest figures, 21 ICBs are reported to be meeting NHSE’s ambitions of 80 percent occupancy, compared to 22 ICBs in October. In total, 9,602 patients were reported as being in a virtual ward in December 2024, compared with 9,896 from October’s figures.
To take a look at the most recent statistics on virtual ward usage and capacity, please click here.
More on virtual wards from 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. The panel shared successes and challenges in their approaches to virtual ward programmes, including around information sharing, consolidating systems, and overcoming concerns about patient safety.
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. KiActiv combines an online platform with a wearable device that collects personalised data about the user’s everyday physical activity, utilising the information to help them learn how to optimise their daily movement, build a programme suitable for the individual, and increase fitness levels with one-to-one mentor support.
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.
Hull University Teaching Hospitals NHS recently shared the impact of its virtual wards in supporting patients with chronic respiratory illnesses including COPD, noting that the service will introduce AI technology to help identify trends. Since introducing the virtual ward over a year ago, the trust reports “a 40% reduction in the number of patients with COPD needing to come back into hospital for treatment”.
