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HomeLink Healthcare is a clinician-led organisation that has been providing Hospital at Home services since 2016. We are experts in Virtual Wards, setting up our first one in 2019 at the Norfolk & Norwich University Hospital.
Virtual wards are a safe and efficient alternative to in-patient care. Our Nurses, Physiotherapists and Healthcare Assistants deliver in-person care in the place people call home, supported and enabled by technology.
What is a Virtual Ward?
Virtual Wards support patients who would otherwise be in hospital to receive the acute care, monitoring and treatment they need in their own home. This can be either ‘step up’ care (to prevent admissions to hospital) or ‘step down’ care (to leave hospital sooner).
In May 2023 the NHS were targeted to create 40–50 virtual wards per 100,000 people immediately and create 10,000 beds by autumn 2023.
In 2022, NHS England set a target for every integrated care system (ICS) to create 40-50 Virtual Ward beds per 100,000 people by April 2023. Guidance stresses that Virtual Wards should provide additional capacity, not stretch existing resources even more thinly. That’s where we can help.
Caring for acutely ill patients at home requires skill and experience. HomeLink Healthcare’s multi-disciplinary teams are built around clinicians with backgrounds in both acute and community care, who are experienced in delivering clinical care in the home. We are also able to provide wrap around care in the home.
What types of patients are suitable for Virtual Wards?
“I was very pleased with the nurses that attended to me. They were helpful, informative, caring and cheerful. I would have had to stay in hospital while having IV antibiotics, so I think this service is excellent.”
– Patient feedback
Our Virtual Wards provide care at home for patients who have been in hospital, often with an acute exacerbation of chronic conditions. Virtual Ward patients are also those identified as being at risk of admission to hospital. We support people with a range of medical conditions including respiratory and frailty.
How does a Virtual Ward work?
In the Virtual Ward model, clinical responsibility lies with the patient’s consultant, GP or primary care lead.
With HomeLink Healthcare, virtual wards include:
- An on-site team managed by a Clinical and Operational Lead co-ordinates patient care from the hospital, liaising with the consultant
- A community-based team carries out patient visits. Typically, visits are scheduled between 0700 and 2200hrs, seven days a week. The virtual ward is supported by a 24/7 clinical on-call service.
- Continuous or intermittent remote monitoring, communicates patient information to the hospital. We have relationships with a number of leading providers of remote monitoring equipment, both intermittent and continuous, which can be included into our service. Alternately, we are happy to use equipment already purchased by the NHS.
- Real-time reporting enables performance to be regularly tracked against key performance indicators (KPIs).
HomeLink Healthcare follows and adheres to the Virtual Ward guidance provided by NHS England. More details on this can be found here.
Watch this video, which was created by NHS England and features HomeLink Healthcare delivering Virtual Ward services to patients within Norfolk and Waveney ICS.
Our Hospital at Home services prevent people being admitted to hospital and enable others to come home more quickly.
Our services:
– offer patients more choice
– improve patient flow
– free up hospital ward capacity
How can I set up a Virtual Ward?
HomeLink Healthcare can rapidly and safely co-design and deploy a virtual ward which has an immediate benefit to patients and health systems. Typically this takes between 8 and 12 weeks from the date we are commissioned.
DOWNLOAD OUR CASE STUDY
Our collaboration with four NHS organisations across Norfolk and Waveney ICS frees up two hospital wards every day and was shortlisted for a 2023 HSJ Partnership Award.
Download the case study and you’ll learn:
- The impact that can be achieved on increasing hospital capacity, improving patient flow, reducing delayed discharges and delivering great patient outcomes
- The benefits of working collaboratively with an expert Hospital at Home provider
Work with us
We report a suite of virtual ward key performance indicators (KPIs) in real-time, so commissioners have complete transparency about what we are doing and how we are doing it. Find out more about the process of commissioning HomeLink Healthcare to set up a Virtual Ward.
Get in touch
To speak to a member of our team about Virtual Wards, call us on (020) 3137 5370 or contact us. You can tell us about your situation, and we can tell you more about our experience of virtual wards and how we might be able to help you.
You might also be interested in:
Home 
Resources:
Thought leadership
Virtual wards: tech matters, but so do people
Emily Wells is an award winning digital health information expert. Here, she outlines her thoughts on how to develop a successful virtual ward, drawing on her Trust’s experience of working on new care pathways with HomeLink Healthcare.
Read more
Thought leadership
CEO presents lessons learnt from setting up and managing virtual wards
Our Chief Executive and Clinical Director Jill Ireland has been in demand this month and has presented at three events in the past month. See her in action here.
Read more
Thought leadership
Virtual wards and how the independent sector can enable their success
Jill Ireland, CEO and Clinical Director of HomeLink Healthcare discusses virtual wards and how they're evolving.
Read more
Case study
Virtual ward and VAC pump therapies: a patient’s experience
A requirement was identified for more complex wound care within the community so we developed a new service providing VAC pump therapy to patients in their homes as part of a virtual ward.
Read more
Case study
Changing attitudes towards hospital and healthcare means more patients are being treated at home
There are many lessons to be learnt from the pandemic. In healthcare, every answer points to the need to care for more people at home. Find out how we've collaborated with NHS partners to combat these challenges.
Read more
Case study
Supporting the flow of patient care from hospital to home
NNUH at Home is a co-created service, set up in 2019 to release in-patient bed capacity and improve patient flow.
Read more
Thought leadership
Almost 60,000 NHS beds blocked by delayed transfers of care every month
Find out how Early Supported Discharge Services and Virtual Wards can reduce Delayed Transfers of Care
Read more
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