Remote medical care expanded

Frimley Health Trust: Virtual wards use live monitoring

The Frimley Health Trust is expanding its urgent and emergency care (UEC) virtual wards in a move which aims to shorten hospital stays and avoid hospital admissions.

The trust, which runs Wexham Park and Heatherwood hospitals, introduced UEC virtual wards in November 2022.

The virtual wards team works alongside the emergency department, ambulatory care and acute medical unit to identify patients who are suitable for at-home care and help avoid unnecessary hospital admissions.

It allows patients who require monitoring, but not necessarily from an inpatient bed, to be discharged earlier and reviewed virtually.

Additional tests can be carried out by using specialist equipment sent to the patient’s home or by outpatient appointments closer to where they live.

Part of the expansion of Frimley’s virtual service includes funding for 60 sets of vital signs monitoring equipment which will be sent home with the patient to monitor their vital signs.

These are fed back digitally to the UEC team who will have a real-time dashboard of all patient readings.

Four main groups of patients can be managed in the virtual ward:

■ Those who need vital signs monitoring, for example, patients with high blood pressure or abnormal heartbeats.

■ Patients who need monitoring and tracking of symptoms who have been given medication and treatment plans. This could be acute headaches or other symptoms where face-to-face reexamination may not be required.

■ Patients who need blood tests repeated to monitor their acute condition.

■ Patients who are regularly admitted to the acute unit, the virtual wards team liaises with speciality teams to avoid them repeatedly having to come to the hospital. The additional funding will allow Frimley to recruit 10 more specialist staff, meaning the virtual wards team has the capacity for 60 patients at any one time.

Gaby Swain, 18, from Maidenhead, was recently cared for by the UEC virtual wards team after going to Wexham Park ED with severe headache and backache.

Gaby, who had recently returned from a trip to Sri Lanka, visited the hospital and underwent a range of tests including a malaria screening.

When the screening came back clear, the teenager was offered the option of being cared for by the UEC virtual wards team.

Her mother Sarah said: “She was still very poorly but we felt reassured to go home and be monitored from there, rather than her having a longer stay in hospital.

“They called me with a diagnosis of dengue fever and advised me how to manage the symptoms with over-the-counter medicine, as it can’t be treated with antibiotics.

“I was so impressed with the service, they spoke to me every day for at least a week after to see how she was. I felt constantly reassured, they really cared about both her as a patient and me, as her Mum.”

Over the past 12 months, 97 per cent of patients cared for by the UEC virtual wards service were discharged after being successfully cared for in their own homes.

Three per cent of patients required admission to a hospital bed, the Frimley

Health Trust added.

Sean Harding, clinical lead for medical same day emergency care and virtual wards at Frimley Health said: “We are delighted at the difference the service is making to the lives of many of our acute patients and the positive feedback we’ve had regarding their care. We are a small team but it’s been a real collaborative effort, working alongside the multidisciplinary inpatient teams.

“The additional funding will allow us to expand significantly and by this time next year we will have capacity to look after the same number of UEC patients in their homes, as we do in the acute unit in one of our hospitals.”