Mid Yorkshire Teaching NHS Trust has shared statistics on its Hospital at Home – Virtual Ward programme, highlighting a saving of 1,422 hospital admissions since the service began, with 318 of these in 2025/26. Overall, the virtual ward has saved 987 bed days in Q1 – Q2 of 2025/26.
In Q1 – Q2 of 2025/26, 40 percent of admissions were step-up admissions, up from 33 percent in 2024/25. The average length of stay for patients on the G41 (elderly acute) ward during Q1-Q2 2025/26 was 2.8 days, the trust states. “Applying this to the step-up cohort, it is estimated that the service has saved 890 bed days via admissions avoidance YTD.”
Total admissions across the year to date were 894, the trust shares, with average monthly admissions increasing from 123 in 2024/25 to 134 in 2025/26. Whilst average bed use has increased from 42.5 beds per day to 42.9 beds per day over the same period, it notes “admissions and bed utilisation have begun to trend downwards in the last three months”.
The operational move to establish a Hospital at Home that encompasses virtual wards has been introduced, according to Mid Yorkshire, with a divisional clinical lead appointed in September 2025, and a revised workforce model supporting, with divisional advanced care practitioners collaborating with the virtual wards team on assessments, MDT, and prescribing.
A review in July 2025 of the frailty virtual ward tested its alignment with the ten components outlined in the National Operating Standards for Virtual Wards, finding a series of areas of non-compliance, including reduced operating hours, a skill mix of staffing impacting on the potential for weekend referrals, multiple system use, and no use of tech-enabled care.
At present, the frailty virtual ward is funded to provide 40 beds, the trust shares, with funding for the model at £760,000 in year one. “Occupancy has previously been above the capacity, but recognition has been made that they were lower acuity patients,” it continues.
Looking ahead, the vision for Mid Yorkshire Teaching is to have a “multispeciality Hospital at Home managed within the Adult Community Service Division with access to speciality advice and guidance as required through MDT”. Capacity and demand modelling is currently underway, along with engagement across wider specialities for support, and options for tech-enabled care being explored. Also in focus are the development of standard operating procedures and clear criteria for admission, and alternative models of service to include a “pull” model.
Elsewhere, details are shared on the trust’s ambitious capital programme for 2025/26, which allocates £6.7 million of capital spend for an EPR to digitise patient records.
Wider trend: Virtual wards
For a HTN Now webinar on the topic of virtual wards, we were joined by a panel of experts including Francesca Markland, senior programme manager for remote monitoring and virtual wards at NHS England; Fhezan Ashraf, senior pharmacist clinical configuration manager at The Dudley Group; and Abigail Scullion, virtual ward manager at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust. Our panel tackled a range of questions and key debates in the virtual wards space, sharing insights on their own approaches, experiences and learnings; as well as considering opportunities for future development and the potential for emerging technologies to make an impact across workforce, patient care, operational efficiency, capacity, and more.
Under the 10 Year Health Plan, the government shared its intention to undertake a national procurement for a new platform for “proactive, planned care”, offering expanded opportunities for remote monitoring. This is backed by further commitments to develop new payment models to encourage a shift in urgent and emergency care, offering financial incentives to drive neighbourhood health forward. The platform will be available to all NHS provider organisations, offering functionality including the ability to remotely monitor patients with data flowing through the NHS App and Single Patient Record.
The latest virtual wards figures for October 2025 have been published, showing an overall virtual ward capacity for England of 12,588, or 19.7 beds per 100,000 GP registered population. In October 2024, these figures were 12,651 and 20.0 beds per 100,000, respectively. Occupancy rates for England are also averaged out at 79.8 percent, a slight increase on 78.2 percent the year prior.
