Merseyside
National Health Service patients can now be treated at home as a “virtual hospital” releases physical beds.
Virtual wards are implemented around the country with a goal to mimic medical treatment in the comfort of patients’ homes. Merseyside has already experienced success with virtual respiratory wards for COPD and covid patients, and physicians intend to free up thousands of hospital bed days by spreading the program to other places.
In the six weeks since it was jointly introduced by Mersey Care and Liverpool University Hospitals (LUHFT), in cooperation with digital health business Docobo, a new heart failure virtual ward, the second in the UK, has seen about 40 patients, some as elderly as 94.
Over the six month model, hospitalization of 200-250 people could be prevented which is upto 1750 bed days and around €450K saved for the NHS.
Everyday consultants go for a ‘virtual ward round’, tech carries out ECGs and patient record their symptoms and observation subsequently reading are sent to the Telehealth Clinical Hub.
