Virtual wards (also known as hospital at home) allow patients to get the care they need at home safely and conveniently, rather than being in hospital. This includes either preventing avoidable hospital admissions or supporting people to safely leave hospital sooner.

Systems are asked to continue scaling-up virtual wards, growing capacity to over 10,000 beds, with a longer-term ambition of reaching 40-50 virtual ward ‘beds’ per 100,000 people, which would mean more than 50,000 admissions a month. This is outlined in the 2023/24 Priorities and Operational Planning Guidance and the Delivery Plan for Recovering Urgent and Emergency Care.

Data

The data is collected through a Situation Report (SitRep) and compiled into a monthly publication.

This publication contains information on virtual ward services in each Integrated Care Board (ICB) in England and at a national level. This includes data on the capacity, occupancy percentage and the capacity per 100,000 of the adult population.

These statistics are classified as experimental and should be used with caution. Experimental statistics are new official statistics undergoing evaluation. More information about experimental statistics can be found on the UK Statistics Authority website.

Data is available for July 2023 onwards.

England Time Series

Virtual Ward – National Time Series April 2024 – May 2025 (XLS, 23K)
Virtual Ward – National Time Series July 2023 – March 2024 (XLS, 23K)

2024/2025 Monthly Data

Monthly Virtual Ward May 2024 (XLS, 27K)
Monthly Virtual Ward April 2024 (XLS, 27K)

2023/2024 Monthly Data

Monthly Virtual Ward March 2024 (XLS, 28K)
Monthly Virtual Ward February 2024 (XLS, 32K)
Monthly Virtual Ward January 2024 (XLS, 32K)
Monthly Virtual Ward December 2023 (XLS, 32K)
Monthly Virtual Ward November 2023 (XLS, 32K)
Monthly Virtual Ward October 2023 (XLS, 32K)
Monthly Virtual Ward September 2023 (XLS, 32K)
Monthly Virtual Ward August 2023 (XLS 31K)
Monthly Virtual Ward July 2023 (XLS, 29K)

Guidance

For more information and resources visit: NHS England » Virtual wards

Contact Us

For further information about the published statistics, please contact the Virtual Ward Programme in NHS England at:

Email: england.virtualward@nhs.net