National virtual care programme subject to budget challenges

NEWS - eHealthNews.nz editor Rebecca McBeth

There are more than 100 virtual care beds in operation and Health New Zealand Te Whatu Ora is establishing a national programme in virtual care.

However, chief executive Margie Apa tells eHealthNews that this work is not advanced and is subject to the organisation being able to build a budget, which it does not currently have.

The national health service has started with stocktaking the many pilots and prototypes around the country.

Hospital in the Home (HiTH) is an acute clinical service that takes staff, equipment, technologies, medication, and skills usually provided in hospitals and delivers that hospital care to selected people in their homes or in nursing homes.

Rachel Haggerty, director - service strategy, planning & purchasing, Health NZ says the HiTH initiative is primarily used in the Northern Region where there are between 100 to 130 virtual care/ HiTH beds.

“Other parts of New Zealand operate virtual care programmes that support people in the home but would not be classified as HiTH,” she says.

A new HitH programme is due to start in Tairawhiti later this month, initially supporting 3-4 people a week.

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Apa travelled to London in May where she visited a virtual ward at Chelsea and Westminster NHS Foundation Trust, to explore their experiences.

She said that while the visit to the NHS was not part of a programme or project, she was interested to learn how the NHS has scaled virtual wards/ care as a way of adding capacity to the system and the impact on clinicians and patient care.

“I was keen to go to a site that was well into implementation so I could get an insight on the operational implications, early benefits and, in particular, hear from frontline clinicians,” says Apa.

She adds that the key thing she observed was that technology is only a small part of the implementation.

“Clinical engagement and leadership in design of clinical pathways is critical to the Chelsea Westminster model to ensure the selection of patients that are appropriate and most likely to benefit from recovering at home with clinical support,” says Apa.

“Pathways are the most critical enablers to agree how patients can be moved into a virtual ward, supports available to help them at home if required, technology to support monitoring and nursing support to give patients assurance that help is there when needed.

“Nurse lead specialist skills worked closely with onboarding nurses who spend time with patients that fit criteria for virtual ward to ensure monitoring is adjusted to the individual patients needs and escalation is timely with the right expertise,” she says.

Read a summary of the virtual care programmes and pilots across the motu in the April edition of Digital Health CONNECT magazine.

Picture: Margie Apa talks to nurses during a London virtual ward visit (credit Tara Donnelly)

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