News Focus

Thousands of patients with heart failure will now get specialist care from home as the NHS expands its virtual wards scheme.

Heart failure patients, used to long stays in hospital, are to benefit from a new NHS clinical guideline, asking local health systems to expand their use of virtual wards.

Around 200,000 people a year are diagnosed with heart failure. People living with this long-term condition require significant input from the NHS services, making up 5% of all emergency hospital admissions in the UK attributed to the condition.

Professor Nick Linker, National Clinical Director for Heart Disease, NHS England said: ‘The expansion of virtual wards for eligible heart failure patients will mean that where clinically appropriate, more people will be able to receive the care and treatment they need from the convenience of their own home and reduce the need for hospital admissions.’

There are around a dozen heart failure virtual wards up and running already, and the Liverpool University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (LUHFT) and Mersey