Clinical Scorecard: Virtual Wards in Acute Care: A Scoping Review of Hospital-Level Care Beyond the Hospital
At a Glance
Category
Detail
Condition
Clinical topic addressed by the source article: Virtual Wards in Acute Care
Key Mechanisms
Home-based hospital-level treatment combines in-person and virtual care with telemonitoring of vital signs, clinical variables, and symptoms, with specialist review of remotely collected and transmitted data.
Target Population
Population described in the source article.
Care Setting
Care setting described in the source article.
Key Highlights
The scoping review examined virtual wards for acute conditions, excluding COVID-19 research and acute exacerbations of chronic conditions; mixed acute and chronic diagnoses remained eligible when separate outcome data could not be separated.
Eligible virtual wards provided specialized, short-term hospital-at-home care with telemonitoring and specialist review.
The review assessed clinical and safety outcomes, costs, resource use, implementation factors, and patient, carer, and staff experiences.
The search covered publications through 28 February 2025 across six databases.
The supplied article excerpt describes the review rationale and methods but does not provide its results.
Guideline-Based Recommendations
Diagnosis
Management
Monitoring & Follow-up
Telemonitoring involves remote surveillance of vital signs, clinical variables, and symptoms, with specialist review of transmitted data.
Monitoring may be active, with patients measuring and reporting data, or passive, using automated devices; transmission may be continuous, intermittent, or mixed.
Risks
Patient & Prescribing Data
Adults aged 18 years or older with an acute condition presenting to the emergency department or admitted to hospital; COVID-19, trauma, psychiatric, primary-care, hospice, and chronic-care studies were excluded.
Virtual wards deliver short-term, specialized hospital-level treatment at home for patients who would otherwise need admission, through admission avoidance or early discharge. The excerpt provides no medication or dosing information.
Clinical Best Practices
The review defines virtual wards as hospital-at-home care integrating technology, telemonitoring, and in-person and virtual care.
The review describes specialist review of remotely collected and transmitted patient data as part of telemonitoring.
The review identifies clinical outcomes, safety, acceptability, and efficacy as factors requiring evaluation before implementation at scale.
The review distinguishes outcomes during the acute episode from outcomes after discharge.
