The virtual ward initiative was set up in South Yorkshire in 2023 as part of NHS policy to allow patients to receive hospital-level care in their own homes. The South Yorkshire programme focused primarily on frailty patients and respiratory patients, such as those with COPD, pneumonia and other acute respiratory infections.
The independent study, supported by Health Data Research UK (HDRUK), looked at hospital admissions, length of stay and readmissions data for around 236,741 patients from across four hospitals.
Drawing upon the the Yorkshire and Humber NHS Secure Data Environment, the study examined data from across Sheffield, Rotherham, Doncaster and Barnsley between 2021 and 2024, assessing whether patients could be safely cared for at home, rather than in hospital.
Researchers found no consistent evidence, either positive or negative, that the introduction of virtual wards reduced the number of hospital admissions, shortened inpatient stays or lowered readmission rates among patients who were eligible for virtual ward care.
Their report suggests that the scale of virtual ward services may be too small to produce a detectable impact across the wider hospital system.
A closer analysis of individual patients from three of the hospitals involved, revealed that patients receiving virtual ward care generally experienced significantly longer periods of care, compared to hospital inpatients.
Readmissions were also a ‘rare’ event for virtual ward patients, but Frailty virtual ward patients were also more likely to go to A&E or be readmitted to hospital within seven days of discharge from the virtual ward. In comparison inpatient spells that were followed by a readmission were more likely to involve chains of multiple readmissions.
Professor Suzanne Mason, SDE Senior Research Lead, said: “To our knowledge, this is the first time anyone has been able to look at virtual ward data in this way.
“This is because it has not been connected in a very standardised way. We have been able to do this important piece of work due to our Connected South Yorkshire database which means we could then link in the additional virtual ward data, once we had located it.
“Using the Secure Data Environment we could then analyse it securely, without it leaving an NHS approved secure environment. Some of the data sat in the community, whilst other data was located within hospital and other teams. This made it more difficult, and we couldn’t collect all the data we wanted.”
The team have also done a qualitive piece of work, looking at the challenges within the initiative and will now undertake a cost-effective analysis study.
Dr Jen Lewis, Medical Statistician at the University of Sheffield, who authored the report, said the work represents an important first step in understanding the impact of virtual wards, whilst highlighting the need for more robust and consistent data to guide future NHS policy.
The team were asked to do the work by the South Yorkshire Integrated Care Board (ICB) who wanted to know how well the four virtual ward services were working. The team pulled together the proposal and Dr Lewis was given special access to the data, via the NHS Secure Data Environment, which meant all the data stayed within an environment that was approved by the NHS.
Professor Mason stressed that limitations in data quality, availability and consistency due to the gradual nature of the introduction of virtual wards, means the results should be interpreted cautiously.
“Better data collection and harmonisation between hospital and virtual wards is needed to fully understand the impact of virtual wards. We are now looking at the cost effectiveness of the initiative as a new piece of work going forward.”