Frimley Health and Care maximising virtual wards and remote monitoring to reduce hospital admissions
Virtual wards are transforming healthcare delivery, improving accessibility and enhancing patient outcomes in the safety of their own homes. The latest data from The Health Foundation reveals a remarkable shift in public opinion, with more people embracing virtual services and open to being treated at home.
In their March 2023 report surveying more than 7,000 members of the public, 71% said they are open to being treated on a virtual ward, while 78% said they would be happy monitoring their own health at home using technologies.
Frimley ICS' 10 operational virtual wards are exceeding planned capacity and throughput expectations. As of September 2023, Frimley ICS’ occupancy rate stands at 85%, surpassing the national expectation of at least 80%. Frimley is one of only 14 ICSs meeting or exceeding this target.
Frimley has also rolled out a proactive approach to remote monitoring for frailty patients based on the ‘know your numbers’ preventative care model, that is helping to keep people well and, through enabling earlier interventions, reduce hospital admissions.
The approach is part of Frimley’s digital transformation programme, Connected Care, and was run in two phases. The first stage was implemented within care homes in March 2022, while patients with complex needs followed in December 2022. Over 6,000 residents who are living with frailty or have high-risk conditions such as diabetes or heart failure, as well as 800 care home residents, have benefited.
Patients are provided with remote monitoring technology and an app to use at home. The app allows users to communicate with healthcare professionals quickly and easily, as well as submit health readings and other vital information.
Since implementation, Frimley Health and Care has seen hospital admissions reduced by 40% for high-need patients and 34% for care home residents. A&E attendance has dropped by 31% for high-need patients and 40% for care home residents. In addition, GP contact was reduced by 19% for the high-need patients and 20% for care home residents, while both groups reduced the volume of medications prescribed by 11%.
Director of Transformation and Digital at NHS Frimley ICB, Sharon Boundy, picks up the progression narrative: “As of October 2023 we are now at over 6,000 Frimley ICS residents being actively monitored across 53 primary care practices and 30 care homes. For our residents still able to live in their own homes we have been able to rapidly enrol our most at-risk patients proactively using patient need grouping within our population health platform.
“With our Connected Care digital ecosystem approach, we can flow resident submitted readings and wider question sets directly into the shared care record and also flow back into our population health platform for active evaluation of outcomes.
“This is data driven, digitally-enabled transformation in action and we are very grateful for the full support of our system in this venture. It is enabling us to intervene at the earliest point with our digital healthcare teams leading the way in this, with only a tiny percentage of patients needing primary or secondary care intervention.
“As we build our clinical pathways across primary and community care with remote monitoring - dovetailing this into our virtual ward programme - we are not only providing our patients the right care at the right time but we are also able to provide care in an increasingly agile way.”