91-year-old hospital patient 'over the moon' to be treated in new virtual ward

Watch: ITV News Meridian's Kit Bradshaw reports on how hospital care is coming home

A 91-year-old man has described how he felt “over the moon” when nurses told him he could receive hospital-level care in his own home, as part of a pioneering new scheme.

Frederick Smith, from Eastbourne, has become one of the first people in Sussex to benefit from an NHS programme known as ‘virtual wards’.

It uses specialist remote monitoring equipment, video calls and face-to-face staff visits to support people at home, who would otherwise have needed to be cared for as a hospital inpatient.

“I was over the moon,” Mr Smith told ITV News Meridian. “Being in hospital there are lovely people and good food but it's a foreign environment, you want to get home.

“Then, of course, once you get home, you actually start the process of getting better. It's the environment that you live in that helps you to recover.”

Frederick Smith received daily visits from nurses to deliver intravenous antibiotics over more than a week, to treat an infection in a cut in his leg.

He is one of 260 patients who have been treated on virtual wards, since the scheme began in Sussex in December.

Approximately half of those patients avoided a hospital admission altogether by receiving acute care at home, while the other half were able to be discharged home earlier, according to NHS Sussex.

Dr Adam Zacks, who works as part of the virtual wards team in East Sussex, said: “We've known for a long time that patients who have a very long stay in hospital don't do well.

“They will lose muscle mass. They become very frail. They're not exercising as much. And we also know that if we can extend hospital level care, we can help patients to recover in their homes.”

The Sussex scheme is part of a national plan to create tens of thousands of virtual ward beds over the coming years. In January, the Prime Minister described the idea as “transformational”. Rishi Sunak said: “It means that we can stop people coming into hospital in the first place. It means we can… get them home quicker.”

But some have raised concerns, with shadow health secretary Wes Streeting saying that virtual wards “without any staff isn't hospital at home, it is home alone”.

The scheme will be open to those experiencing a deterioration in their respiratory, frailty or heart failure condition or those with a general medical acute illness.

Virtual wards aim to provide additional capacity to existing hospital beds, according to NHS Sussex documents.