Damien Moore MP welcomes 10,000 hospital-at-home beds delivered to treat patients in the community.
Damien Moore MP has expressed his appreciation for the NHS’s achievement to deliver 10,421 virtual wards across the United Kingdom. This initiative demonstrates a world-leading programme to fulfil the Government’s commitment to reduce NHS waiting lists while increasing care capacity nationally. These virtual wards provide community-based care to patients through offering a broad range of home-based treatments, including blood tests, drug prescription, and IV administration, to support chronic illnesses including COPD, heart disease, frailty.
Virtual wards operate as 'ward around' programs, ensuring daily monitoring through home visits or virtual appointments. They prioritise care and recovery within the community using non-invasive monitoring devices, wearables, and sensors. These devices support customised patient care and recovery protocols, including online applications and other non-invasive monitoring devices, to deliver bespoke care and recovery programs.
Member of Parliament for Southport, Damien Moore, said:
“With 827,690 serious ambulance incidents, 77,553 category-1 999 call-outs, 2,165,741 A&E attendances, and 522,000 emergency admissions in September alone, I fully support the NHS' initiative to secure additional capacity and reduce waiting times with 10,421 virtual beds across the United Kingdom installed, supporting over 240,000 patients during its community trial.
“Coinciding with the Government's £1,000,000 Automated External Defibrillator Fund, £250 million 'Made with Care' recruitment fund, £7.5 billion investment in the social care estate, and £3 million Adult Social Care Digital Transformation programme, it's clear the Government is heavily investing in the skills, capacity, and outcome of our NHS and healthcare professions across the United Kingdom.
“To ensure the continuity of care-decentralisation, I will continue to campaign vociferously for additional funding to reinstate Southport and Formby District General Hospital's paediatric A&E and continued investment in our adult social care facilities, ensuring that Southport remains a centre of healthcare excellence for our patients, carers, and local communities.”
Health and Social Care Secretary Steve Barclay said:
“Thousands of patients have benefitted from the NHS’s ‘hospitals at home’, which give them the opportunity to recover in the comfort of their own homes while being monitored remotely by clinical staff. This approach, also known as ‘virtual wards’, has been shown to benefit patients and eases pressure on the NHS by freeing up hospital beds.
“We have delivered on our promise to roll out 10,000 hospital-at-home places by winter – a key target in our Urgent and Emergency Care Recovery Plan and a testament to the hard work of NHS staff.
“These ‘hospitals at home’ will speed up recovery times for patients and help cut waiting lists”
Professor Sir Stephen Powis, NHS national medical director, said:
“Our world-leading virtual ward programme is a huge leap forward in the way the NHS treats patients enabling them to receive hospital-level care in their own home.
“The NHS is embracing the latest technology, with regular check-ins from local clinicians in daily ‘ward rounds’ while freeing up hospital beds for those that need them most – it is testament to the hard work and dedication of NHS staff across the country that we have delivered on our target and rolled out more than 10,000 virtual ward beds by the end of September.
“We know that industrial action is also continuing to pile pressure on services and impact capacity adding a lot of pressure to hospitals before winter, coming on top of high levels of demand with last month seeing more 999 ambulance calls than any month this year as well as the busiest September ever for A&E attendances, up almost 8% on the same month last year.
“But despite this pressure, it is clear from today’s figures that NHS staff are working incredibly hard to deliver for patients with 10% more patients coming off the waiting list in August than the same month before the pandemic”