As the COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically transformed the healthcare landscape, there is a growing demand for healthcare services to be delivered at the patient’s convenience to accelerate the adoption of virtual care.
With lockdowns and social distancing measures in place, patients are reluctant to visit hospitals and clinics for fear of exposure to the virus. As a result, healthcare providers have turned to remote monitoring and telehealth to deliver care to patients in the comfort of their homes.
Two innovative models that have emerged as a result of this transformation are hospitals at home and virtual wards. These models are changing the face of virtual care and improving patient outcomes.
Let’s understand the importance of virtual wards which plays a great asset to revolutionize virtual care techniques.
Need for virtual wards
It is said that caring for people in their homes supports their journey as it enables more autonomy and choice to stay in familiar surroundings. Virtual wards significantly reduce the risk of accidents and unplanned hospital admission. It offers an opportunity to allocate hospital resources and virtual care platforms more effectively ensuring that critical care is provided to those who need it most.
According to the studies, the implementation of virtual wards reduces 50% of the hospital readmission rate and the average strength of hospital stay is reduced by 40 %.
As NHS shared business services estimation, the technology-enabled care service framework will help health 52 and social care services to free up beds to reduce the need for appointments to speed up patient treatment effectively.
Key drivers for the success of virtual wards
Virtual wards have the potential to improve patient outcomes while also freeing up hospital resources. To ensure their success, several key drivers must be in place.
- Strong Communication
This parameter plays a critical role in virtual wards. Effective communication between healthcare providers and patients is essential to ensure that patients receive the care they need until and unless it should be clear, timely, and easily accessible to all parties involved.
- Technology
Technology is a critical component of virtual wards. Wearable devices, telemedicine, and mobile health apps are just a few examples of technology that can be used to monitor patients and provide vital virtual care solutions for patients. It must be reliable and user-friendly to ensure its effectiveness.
- Care Coordination
Healthcare providers must work together to provide coordinated care to patients. A care coordinator can help ensure that patients receive the care they need and that all providers are on the same page.
- Skilled Healthcare Providers
Skilled healthcare providers are essential for the success of virtual wards. Providers must be trained in remote care delivery and be able to effectively use technology to monitor and treat patients.
- Patient Education
Patients must understand how to use the technology, what to expect during their care, and how to communicate with their healthcare providers. Education can help patients feel more comfortable with virtual care delivery and ensure that they receive the care they need.
Achieve the goal of virtual care with our top solutions
With years of experience in technology, smartData is skilled at building virtual care platforms specifically for virtual care). Our team experts integrated numerous remote monitoring BLE-based devices using SDK/protocol documents, as well as health cloud APIs for tracking patient vitals and data exchange with various EHR solutions using FHIR.
Our experts developed various remote monitoring features I.e. record vitals remotely, smart Alerts based on the threshold values, medical adherence, visual (graphical) array of the vitals, clinical pathway management, risk score, exchange of data with Labs/EHR and video consultation.
We also achieve excellence in integrating an oximeter to ICU based bed using an ethernet-based smartConnect box. The feature set of an RPM solution varies from customer to customer ( can range from simple to complex based on the requirement).
We ensure our solutions are interoperable, compliant, and programmed with data encryption for web and mobile systems. Connect with our healthcare team now.
Conclusion
Lastly, virtual wards allow patients to receive the care they need at home. Increasingly, it is vital in healthcare due to its patient-centric approach, reduced risk of infection, cost-effectiveness, resource allocation and improve patient outcomes.
As healthcare continues to evolve, it is clear that hospitals at home and virtual wards will play an increasingly vital role in delivering patient-centric care that meets the needs of patients and providers alike. Our healthcare team will help you with all your requirement to design a reliable solution.
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