Medway NHS Foundation Trust has taken a bold step forward in its virtual care journey by transitioning to a new digital platform – part of its strategy to scale a full virtual hospital at the heart of an integrated neighbourhood.
Partnering with health tech provider Feebris, the Trust has not only ensured continuity of care but has significantly enhanced efficiency, experience and outcomes, seeing a new benchmark for virtual care in the NHS.
At the heart of this transformation is a simple but powerful principle: measuring what matters.
As virtual wards become business as usual across the NHS, the Trust and its SMART (Surgical, Medical, Acute and Recovery) team – covering Hospital at Home and Virtual Monitoring – are leading the way in identifying and evidencing the key drivers that justify the business case for a virtual hospital at scale.
The transition to the new platform was completed in just six weeks, without disrupting services or increasing the burden on staff.
Within the month of go-live:
- In week 1: 38 patients were admitted.
- By week 3: 93 patients were on the virtual ward (95% capacity). • By week 4: All staff reported feeling positive about the change.
Jackie Hammond, Head of Nursing, Virtual Ward Services (SMART), said: “Change fatigue is real in the NHS,” said “The reason we selected Feebris as our partner for scale, after a careful selection process, was the configurability of the technology, their hands-on change management, willingness to jointly evolve processes and commitment to making the transition not just smooth, but energising.”
Efficiency That Matters
What sets Medway apart is their courageous leadership in harnessing new models of work to deliver undeniable benefits for patients, staff and budgets.
From a financial and operational standpoint, the programme is saving time and money during a time of unprecedented pressure:
Costs: A day on the Medway virtual ward costs a third of a day in-hospital.
Efficiency: The nurse-to-staff ratio on the virtual ward is 1:20, compared to 1:5 in hospital. Within this, the average onboarding /me is just 20 minutes.
Clinical Scope: The Trust’s SMART service supports all clinical conditions from all specialties, ensuring a patient-centred approach.
Capacity: All patients admitted are of an acuity level that would otherwise have required hospitalisation. In just 1 month, the SMART team saves >1,500 hospital bed days.
The Trust is also the first pilot site to successfully submit data to the Federated Data Platform as part of NHS England’s move to a new minimum data set for virtual wards. This will replace the current SitRep and enable automated daily collection of pseudonymised data nationally.
Patient Experience at the Centre
Patients are the heart of the Medway service, deliberately designed to reduce stress, improve recovery and reduce risk of hospital-related complications. Patients are not just receiving care – they’re embracing it:
- It takes 7 minutes to complete an average health check-up.
- Most patients prefer virtual care to being in hospital.
- The Trust is seeing >95% compliance with remote monitoring pathways.
Pauline Pearce, an 80-year-old resident of Sittingbourne, who was the first patient to be admitted to the new virtual ward, shared: “Being on the virtual ward meant I could recover in the comfort of my own home, which made such a difference. I felt supported by the nursing team and it gave me peace of mind knowing they were just a call away.”
Looking Ahead: Virtual Wards Are Just the Beginning
Medway’s journey shows that virtual wards are a launchpad – not the destination. They offer an opportunity to rethink how care is delivered, organised and measured across a region.
“We’re not just delivering care at home,” explained Tracy Stocker, Director of Operations and SRO for the Virtual Ward Programme.
“We’re building the systems, culture, and evidence base to support a truly distributed, data-driven and patient-centric virtual hospital.”
