Virtual wards designed for children
Paediatric virtual wards designed to deliver the best possible care for children
Paediatric virtual wards designed to deliver the best possible care for children
"The introduction of paediatric virtual wards means children can receive clinical care from home, surrounded by family and an environment they and their parents would rather they be – with nurses and doctors just a call away”
NHS National Clinical Director for Children and Young People1
"We firmly believe paediatric virtual wards will have an enormous impact on clinicians, caregivers and, most importantly, our young patients. Alongside our cutting-edge technology, we're heavily investing in developing in-house paediatric MDTs, to lead the way in creating child-focused virtual ward pathways.”
Chief Medical Officer, Doccla
Hear from our Senior Medical Lead who describes how our pathways work hand-in-hand with clinicians, children and their caregivers.
The number of children and young people in the queue for care and treatment has soared to more than 350,000, and despite paediatric teams working immensely hard to stem the rising tide, numbers continue to increase. There are now 100,000 more children waiting to be seen by a consultant than there were in 2021.2
Against this backdrop, NHS England has announced that paediatrics will be a priority pathway for virtual wards. Doccla, the UK’s leading supplier of virtual wards, is working with paediatric specialists across tertiary, acute and community settings to develop paediatric virtual wards that deliver hospital-level care from home and provide peace of mind for loved ones.
Reduce length of stay in hospital by an average of 3 days per child.3
Increase clinical capacity by 20%.
Reduce stress and anxiety by caring for children in familiar surroundings.
For children with chronic conditions hospital readmissions4 decrease by 38%.
Remote orthopaedic consultations could enable 40% of children to be discharged after one consult.5
To ensure minimal disruption to the wider family unit.
Being away from loved ones, sleeping in a new bed, a break to the normal routine: these are factors that can be disorienting and stressful for children. Virtual wards offer a chance to reimagine hospital-level care and improve wellbeing, with studies showing Quality of Life scores for children monitored from home with long-term conditions improve by 13% within 3 months6. Benefits for children include:
When a child is unwell, it doesn’t just affect the child but the family dynamic as a whole. That’s why our virtual ward pathways are designed to meet the needs of both children and their caregivers, by supporting the family unit in a variety of ways. Benefits for caregivers include:
Clinician identifies suitable patient and admits them to the Doccla virtual ward through NHS Spine Integration or directly from the Electronic Patient Record system.
Doccla’s specialist support team coach caregivers and patients on how to use the devices.
Caregivers submit measurements via their monitoring devices. These feed directly into a dashboard, which integrates with your EHR.
Measurements are visualised in a time-ordered graph to support clinicians to identify signs of deterioration. As a CQC-registered provider, our clinical MDT, including paediatric specialists, can monitor patients. The software enables clinicians to video call and message patients.
Patients and their caregivers have access to Doccla’s specialist helpline 7-days a week, task shifting all non-clinical queries from your team.
With winter approaching, we know that paediatric departments will continue to face increasing pressures on bed and clinical capacity.
We can support you to deploy paediatric virtual wards quickly and effectively. Our specialist clinical team has developed a series of templated paediatric pathway guides that can quickly be implemented with your teams.
Bristol, North Somerset
and South Gloucestershire
Integrated Care Board
Central and
North West London
NHS Foundation Trust
East Kent
Hospitals University
NHS Foundation Trust
Cambridgeshire
Community Services
NHS Trust
East London
NHS Foundation Trust
Essex
Partnership University
NHS Foundation Trust
Hertfordshire
Community
NHS Trust
Kettering
General Hospital
NHS Foundation Trust
Northamptonshire
Clinical Commissioning Group
Northampton
General Hospital
NHS Trust
Northern Care Alliance
NHS Trust
Solent
NHS Trust
University Hospitals
Coventry and Warwickshire
NHS Trust