Why Virtual Hospitals are the patient-centred catalyst for delivering SPR, FDP, SCIP and INTs by Diarmaid Crean, Principal Associate at Ethical Healthcare Consulting
The NHS has finally backed its boldest, most patient-focused innovation: Virtual Hospitals. The forthcoming 10-year plan confirms what frontline teams and the evidence already show — Virtual Hospitals are no longer a fringe innovation. They are the future of care.
As James Benson, National Director for Virtual Wards and CEO of CLCHT, powerfully put it at the Manchester Convenzis Virtual Ward event last week:
“If we don’t do the virtual hospital project now, it will hasten the end of a much bigger, longer-running project — the NHS itself.”
Scaling Virtual Wards into fully functioning, 24/7 Virtual Hospitals is a litmus test. It will show whether national programmes like the Single Patient Record (SPR), Federated Data Platform (FDP), Social Care Information Platform (SCIP) and Integrated Neighbourhood Teams (INTs) can finally deliver real, felt change for patients.
Because let’s be clear: these programmes will remain abstract and disconnected until people experience a tangible difference in their care.
Virtual Hospitals are our opportunity to unify these siloed efforts — to stop building in parallel and start delivering as one.
For this to happen, national programmes must meet four “golden” user needs:
- A Seamless Patient Experience
People must move fluidly between GPs, hospitals, community services, social care and the VCSE sector — with their health information visible and accessible in the NHS App.
- Virtual Escalation for Complex Needs
INT multi-disciplinary teams should have a clear, virtual point of escalation to bring in remote clinical support for people with complex care needs.
- Strategic Use of Consultant Time
Integrated Care Boards must be able to allocate consultant PAs to Virtual Hospitals to target local population health priorities — including health inequalities — with serious clinical resource.
- A Compassionate Alternative to Hospital Death
Virtual Hospitals must offer people the choice to be cared for — and to die, if that is their preference — outside hospital, supported by universal care plans, Shared Care Records and the Single Patient Record.
The right people.
With the right information.
At the right time.
That’s what will make Virtual Hospitals real — and make the NHS truly digital, preventative, and rooted in the community.
About the author:
Diarmaid Crean is a highly experienced digital health leader with a strong track record of delivering national-scale innovation across health and care. Formerly Deputy Director for Digital Health at Public Health England and Chief Digital and Technology Officer at Sussex Community NHS Foundation Trust, Diarmaid now advises both public and private sector clients on large-scale digital transformation through Ethical Healthcare Consulting.